For the financial year 2012-13, CDA has estimated it will generate funds amounting to Rs21 billion from the sale of land. PHOTO: FILE
The capital’s cash-strapped civic agency is pinning its hopes on a commercial plot in F-5 to replenish its coffers after an upcoming auction. The one hitch that complicates things is that the piece of land is currently occupied by a five-star hotel adjacent to it.
The auction committee of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has identified some 47 residential and 15 commercial plots in various sectors which will be auctioned on March 25 and 26. The two-day auction will be held at Pak-China Friendship Centre where the centre of attraction will be the commercial plot in Ghulshan-e-Jinnah reserved for the construction of a hotel. “The plot is ideally located and equal in size to the five-star hotel’s. We expect it to fetch a great price,” said a CDA board member who wished not to be named.
A five-star hotel is currently using the commercial plot under an Open Area Permission licence issued by the CDA’s Directorate of Municipal Administration (DMA) without approval from CDA’s Planning Wing. According to documents available with The Express Tribune, the Planning Wing has directed DMA to cancel all the licences issued to the five-star and get the commercial plot vacated. An inquiry has also been ordered into the issuance of licences without taking permission from the Planning Wing.
Details shared by an official of CDA’s Estate Management Wing show that residential plots in Sector G-10/2, Sector G-11/2, Sector G-11/4 and Sectors D-12 will also be auctioned on March 25. On the second day, 15 commercial plots, including plots located opposite McDonald’s in Sector F-10/2, reserved for construction of class-III shopping mall, a plot measuring 1,600 square yards in Blue Area and the aforementioned plot in F-5, will be auctioned.
For the financial year 2012-13, CDA has estimated it will generate funds amounting to Rs21 billion from the sale of land. CDA has recently shortened the payment schedule for auctioned plots. Buyers were not very forthcoming during the last auction in December 2012, because of which the auction committee withdrew some of the plots on the day of the auction and the authority was only able to make Rs1.09 billion.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 12th, 2013.
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