RICS to make Ghana’s property market competitive, investor-friendly
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), a global professional body in land and property standards, has announced its presence in the Ghana, the hub of its operations in West Africa.
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This will afford the players in the nation’s construction and built industry adopt and take advantage of international standards in property measurement and validation. The players include real estate developers, businesses, government institutions, property owners and managers among others.
As a widely acclaimed professional body for the promotion and enforcement of International Property Measurement Standards (IPMS) and International Valuation Standards (IVS) in lands, real estate, infrastructure and construction, RICS is expected to help grow the construction and built industry.
Together with other organisations worldwide, RICS will deliver five separate international standards in five different fields through five different coalitions including Ethics, Valuation, Property Measurement, Construction Measurement and Land Measurement.
At a stakeholders meeting held on Wednesday, July 13 in collaboration with Broll Ghana, one tof Ghana’s foremost property managers, RICS announced its key focus areas.
The session was used to introduce the stakeholders in Ghana’s property market to the various international standards in property measurement and valuation currently being implemented in over 130 countries and adopted by more than 200 businesses including governments around the world.
Director of Global Property Standards at RICS, Peter Bolton King, emphasised the relevance of insisting on standards in Ghana’s property market.
Speaking to Graphic Business at the sidelines of the meeting, he explained standards in property management, the world over, facilitate and boost investment attraction into any country with a trickling down effect on the living standards of the people.
“If you are expecting international investors and big corporate users to invest in Ghana, then like every other country, you need to have the assurance that you are dealing with that transparency as far as the property market is concerned,” he said.
According to him, even though the outside world may not know much about the Ghanaian property market, consistency with international standards, will make it easier for multinational companies and institutional investors to invest in the country.
West Africa Regional Manager for RICS, Benjamin Manu, said local businesses also stand to benefit from activities of RICS.
He underscored that any business that adopts international property measurement and evaluation standards in its activities de-risks its investment process.
“It also indicates that you are transparent in the way you measure and value your property. It also implies you are abiding by the International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS,” he said.
So as a bank or multinational institution, if you are able to value your assets very well and record them adequately, it will contribute to your own assets as a bank year on year, he added.
Why international standards?
The built industry represents 70 per cent of global wealth and contributes 10 per cent of the global work force – thus the need to achieve consistent and comparable international property measurement and valuation standards to facilitate growth and development.