ISLAMABAD: On the third day of the auction of commercial plots, a small plot of around half a marla (150 square feet) for the specific trade of fruit, vegetable and meat was sold out against about Rs50 million.

The CDA after auctioning big sizes eight commercial plots during first two days against 10.9 billion, on Thursday put small plots measuring 150 feet only which turned out to be a hot cake for the investors.

The CDA’s planning wing had earmarked three small markets in F-6, F-8 and G-11 for fruit, vegetable and meat shops. All markets have six plots, each measuring 150 feet.

There was a huge competition among the businessmen as all shops of F-6 sector were auctioned while out of six three at F-8 market were sold off.

Plot measuring 150 square feet meant for fruit, vegetable and meat shop fetches about Rs50m

On the last day of the auction (today), the remaining plots will presented for auction. The CDA received the highest price of Rs47 million against one plot while the others were sold off at Rs24 and above.

The CDA, since its inception, has been relying on its land bank and every year it holds auctions of commercials plots and some time residential plots to meet its development and non-development expenditure as the civic agency has no serious alternative to generate funds.

“How long we will continue selling our assets [plots] to run the affairs? There should be some alternate arrangements for receiving regular income,” said an official of the CDA.

He said that being the custodian of land bank of Islamabad, the CDA should have some alternate arrangements such as hotels, commercial centres to get rent on a monthly basis. Similarly, he said CDA could generate handsome revenue by developing new residential sectors, but on that front the progress of the civic agency has been disappointing as no new sector was developed during the last two decades.

“Though, currently, work is in progress in some sectors, I can say no proper sector was developed after D-12,” he said.

However, an officer of CDA said that being development body, it was the responsibility of the CDA to provide commercial and residential plots to investors and citizens.

“Providing commercial plots is our core job for planned expansion of the city and to generate business activity, therefore, we auction plots,” the officer said.

The CDA is pinning high hope on the ongoing auction as it has been facing finical constraints.

Sources said that currently the civic agency has only around five billion of rupees in its accounts while there is liability of billions of rupees against development projects.

Last month, the management, due to shortage of funds, had decided that no new development projects will be started and available funds will be spent on ongoing projects in a bid to get them completed. The management of CDA is expecting Rs20 billion from the four-day auction.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2023