| ISLAMABAD - The Capital Development Authority is at the verge of default and it is trying hard to overcome shrinking fiscal space by repeated auctions of the commercial plots.
The civic authority has announced a three days long auction starting from Wednesday, and put multiple plots of different categories. It is pertinent to mention here that earlier there were about two to three auctions in a year, however, the civic authority had conducted five auctions in 2023. The last auction was held in October 2023 and now the civic authority is once again going to sell plots to run its affairs. Instead of making serious efforts to figure out viable and long term alternatives, the incumbent management is stuck with an idea to sell more plots to fuel its needs for a few more months irrespective of the fact that the recent auction had badly backfired as investors did not express their interest in said auction.
Sources told that billions of rupees are needed to fulfil the needs of development project initiated by the successive managements in past years in addition to a liability of about 10 billion of development works in rural areas, which were placed on CDA’s shoulders on political grounds by the previous government and it do not come directly under the domain of civic authority.
Furthermore, it is evident from the record that extraordinary liabilities have been created against the CDA due to multiple ongoing projects that were initiated on the directions of the federal government beyond going to the mandate of civic authority purely on political grounds.
As for instance, CDA has nothing to do with the operations of metro bus services as nowhere in the country such a facility is being run by any city development authority but there are 3 metro bus routes currently being financed by the city managers from its own kitty.
Meanwhile, the Bara Kahu Bypass project, which should be constructed by the National Highway Authority, was also taken up by CDA through its own funding that created an extra burden of billions of rupees.
Similarly, projects like winding and improvement of IJP road, Margalla Avenue were also beyond the mandate of CDA as same will cater the interprovincial traffic whereas the signal free Islamabad Expressway was initially planned to be funded through Public Sector Development Program but same was diverted towards the city body as well.
Though, now the authority has stopped all kinds of new development works and also slowed down the pace of already commenced projects, there are huge pending liabilities involving billions of rupees on part of already completed projects.
These additional and irrational financial burdens taken on their shoulders by the city managers forced the CDA to sell its precious commercial land bank in an uncompetitive environment — leaving the city body in the loss of billions of rupees. |
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