"We have taken a decision, and I hope we don't live to regret it, that we are going to have to reduce some of the standards that we had insisted upon in terms of infrastructural development, and a whole range of things," Golding said.

He was speaking on Thursday at the 28th General Assembly of Ministers and High Level Authorities on Housing and Urbanisation in Latin America and the Caribbean, in Montego Bay, St James.

Golding argued that the infrastructure costs of private housing developments had made them prohibitive for many ordinary Jamaicans.

He indicated that many persons had resorted to squatting because of exorbitant housing costs.

According to Golding, there was no point in insisting that before individual titles were secured and lands subdivided, the developer put in beautiful roads, sidewalks and curb walls. "... Before you are even finished doing that, you would have excluded from that solution the vast majority of the people who are in need of housing interventions," he said.

The prime minister also told the conference that the Government was working to simplify the process for obtaining land titles.