Housing Minister Majid Al-Hogail revealed during his meeting yesterday with business leaders in Jeddah that the transformation of the Real Estate Fund into an investment and financing entity will increase its capital to 550 billion riyals by 2020, Al-Hogail confirmed that there is a plan to disburse monthly payments that will benefit 80,000 applicants during the current year.

During the meeting, His Excellency the Minister noted an initiative by the Ministry of Municipalities and Housing to allocate 16 billion riyals from the investment fund to address informal settlements in Riyadh in an initial phase, after which the initiative will be rolled out in stages across all regions, Al-Hogail noted that there is no desire to live in informal settlements, while the outskirts of cities suffer from a lack of development due to challenges related to delivering services to those areas, which has led to a focus on the city center.