KARACHI:
The Lahore High Court’s verdict scrapping the controversial Ravi riverfront urban development project is good news for environmentalists as well as farmers whose lands were forcibly acquired for yet another real estate project for the elite of the country. Present-day Lahore is just a concrete jungle with demarcated plots and negligible construction. The green pastures, trees and fields that once served as a source of fresh air and provided fruits and vegetables have now been erased. This has also contributed to the intensified smog in the city.
The low taxation and amnesty schemes for real estate projects have made them attractive for parking black money by the powerful nexus of the real estate cartels. This also explains why Pakistan continuously ranks poorly on the Corruption Perception Index. The real estate lobby is extremely powerful because a vicious social media campaign has been launched against the judges who gave these public interest judgments. Pakistan’s national security and state sovereignty that depend on the economy is compromised by these vested interests because we have to borrow from unfriendly international financial agencies to meet the ever-widening gap between revenues and expenditure.
Due to the attractive instant profits and tax reliefs for real estate investors, there has been a continuous decline in investment in other industries. Our exports will fail to meet consumer requirements for goods that were or could be manufactured locally. Instead, industries are closing, and the money is diverted to real estate projects and commercial projects. The tax benefits given to real estate and land developers are so attractive that a country that once boasted of being an agro-based economy, self-sufficient to meet domestic food requirements and export the surplus, has now been reduced to a nation forced to import even basic food items like wheat, vegetables, etc.
Malik Tariq
Lahore
Published in The Express Tribune, January 30th, 2022.
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