Commercialisation fees: DCO seen as going soft on traders ahead of elections

Punjab govt asked to extend deadline for collection of conversion fees.

LAHORE: The city government has sought more time to collect commercialisation fees on all commercial roads, with a deadline for this set by the Punjab government due to expire on June 30.

The office of the district coordination officer (DCO) sent a letter to the local government secretary stating that the target of collection of all such fees by the deadline could not be met. It said that the District Office of Special Planning had recently conducted a survey identifying 17,493 commercial properties on the 117 commercial roads in the city, giving the city government potential revenue of Rs9 billion. It did not say how much time was needed.

Commercialisation fees are fees that must be paid for the conversion of a residential property to a property being used for commercial purposes, such as a shop or office.

Special Planning officials said that their staff had been given until February to serve notices on all properties where commercialisation fees had not been paid. The notices give the properties seven days to pay or face legal action. Prior to the survey, the office had been set an annual revenue collection target of Rs500 million. The officials said that they had collected just over Rs30 million.

Special Planning officials said that the collection target would be especially tough to meet with DCO Noorul Amin Mengal recently suspending the notices for a couple of markets.



Three days ago, the DCO suspended notices served on shopkeepers in a market at Daroghanwala after they lodged an informal protest, stating that they should not be forced to pay commercialisation fees since the market had been in place for several decades and they were already paying commercial tariff electricity bills.

The case was sent to the local government secretary for review.

On January 15, the DCO had visited Chamra Mandi (hides market) and suspended notices served there. The traders there argued that the market had been in place since 1913

Officials said that the DCO’s move to suspend these notices was politically motivated, since with elections coming up, haggling with traders in these areas over commercialisation fees might cost the PML-N-led Punjab government some votes.

If the DCO kept suspending commercialisation fee notices when traders protested, “why would anyone pay the fees?” an official said. Sending the matter to the local government secretary was a way of putting it in storage.

Imran Maqbool, the public relations officer to the DCO, denied that there was any political pressure on Mengal to appease traders.

The local government secretary was not available for comment.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2013.