Public Real Estate Company


The Public Real Estate Company, or SIP, was a state-owned company that developed serviced plots and built housing for civil servants and managers in Burundi.

History

SIP was created by Decree No. 100/69 of 7 May 1979.
The state ended its formula of free housing for civil servants.
SIP immediately began to develop new neighborhoods for senior civil servants, excluding private sector agents and other lower categories of the Civil Service.
The state subsidized the interest on loans for first housing granted to its executives and agents by 100%, and covered 20% of the capital was created as a joint venture to support the government's policy on urban housing.
It provided credit to SIP and the Encadrement des Constructions Sociales et Aménagement des Terrains to finance housing operations and real estate investments.
After a reform in 1991, SIP continued to develop land and build for senior and middle managers, while ECOSAT developed land and built houses for lower income public and private sector employees.
Due to the lack of land reserves, their activities were carried out in fits and starts.
In July 2014 Ernest Mberamiheto, Minister of Good Governance and Privatization, answered questions in a National Assembly debate.
Companies that had been recommended for privatization over a five-year period included SOSUMO, SIP, SRDI, OTB, ALM, COGERCO, LNBTP and ONATOUR.
It was recommended that measures be put in place to prevent the assets of these companies being abused in the interim before privatization occurred.
As of 2017 SIP and ECOSAT were experiencing serious financial difficulties.
SIP had very few human, technical or financial resources, and mainly just produced serviced plots for better-off people.
In the previous twenty years it had produced 4,340 serviced plots in Bujumbura and a few other urban centers, a small quantity given the pace of urban growth in Burundi.
The Office Burundais de l'Urbanisme, de l’Habitat et de la construction was created by decree n°100/079 of 24 May 2019 by merging six existing institutions: