SUVA, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Fiji's Housing Authority will develop 1,000 lots per year to meet the demand for housing in the island nation as the authority moves to digitization to speed up processes for more than 6,000 pending applicants.

According to Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC), Housing Authority Chair Nesbitt Hazelman said on Monday that a lot of processes are involved when approving applications for housing or land by the Housing Authority. With the appointment of a new chief executive, the chair said, the authority will now work with relevant stakeholders to streamline its processes so that applications can be processed faster.

Newly appointed Housing Authority Chief Executive officer Robert Sen said one key criterion to qualify for low cost affordable housing in Fiji is that the combined annual household income must be less than 50,000 Fijian dollars (about 22,000 U.S. dollars).

"We will be talking to Fiji Revenue and Customs Service in terms of getting some data from there to reduce the time in getting the houses and the lots completed. There are other utilities like the Water Authority of Fiji, the Fiji Roads Authority because they also have their annual budget, their annual work programs and they need to fit in our requirement in there too."

The Housing Authority's continuous challenge is getting response from interested buyers and the new digitization program is expected to solve this issue.

Fiji's Housing Authority will be engaging other agencies to help them constantly update and review the information of its customers.

To date, the Authority has around 6,000 expressions of interest for housing and land and the government's digitization initiative will be key in assisting the Authority in reviewing these applications.