LAHORE: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ravi Urban Development Authority (RUDA) Imran Amin has indicated that inflation and manifold hike in construction cost can affect the authority’s profit and increase the prices of properties.
Speaking to Profit/Pakistan Today in a special session, the CEO said that higher construction cost will increase the cost of building infrastructure.
“On the one hand, this increase will obviously push the prices of property up in the project while on the other hand, inflation has already affected the Ravi Riverfront project adversely,” he pointed out.
In response to a question regarding local and foreign investment, Mr Amin said that the authority is being given a commitment to invest $1.7 billion by various local and international investors.
“These investors include some groups from Saudi Arabia and Dubai, which are working on industrial and entertainment zones. The signed preliminary documents are with the Saudi group and work will begin in September,” he expressed his hope.
The CEO believed that the need for housing has increased in view of the growing population and at the same time, there is a need for overcoming the problem of deforestation.
“Our project is a huge market in terms of housing and we need a lot of houses to build on a monthly basis because the population has increased. Similarly, clean water is an important need of the hour for which protection of Ravi River and construction of barrages are important. We don’t even have forest cover because the forests in the country are very depleted. We are creating public parks and recreation zones in our projects to resolve the forest problems. Moreover, we are creating a core gaming area, designed for independent gaming. Due to such initiatives, local and international investors are also attracted to invest in our projects,” he informed.
When asked about the development in the industrial zone of Ravi city, Mr Amin replied that an awareness campaign regarding registration was started in the RUDA Industrial Zone in July and the Ravi Industrial Association had started a drive to register factories in the area to provide better facilities and world-class infrastructure to the industrial zone.
“Hundreds of employers have so far been registered with RUDA through the said campaign, while dozens are becoming a part of this process. We intend to provide world-class infrastructure in the industrial zone of the project soon,” he maintained.
To a question about the recently announced housing project ‘Chahar Bagh’ by the authority, the CEO said that the construction of apartments and buildings under this project is going to start soon.
“Chahar Bagh is a residential and commercial community. However, small communities are being developed by the authority itself and it will be green and a high-quality community. For this project we did open balloting. In April, the process of balloting of 10 marla and 1 kanal plots in this project was completed and a total of 3 lists containing the names of successful, unsuccessful and waiting candidates were also released. Successful candidates were required to deposit 10 percent of the original amount within 30 days. However, all this process was done in a very transparent manner,” he maintained.
