January 15, 2008	Tuesday	Muharram 05, 1429

KARACHI, Jan 14: The Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) has increased scrutiny fees for approval of building plans of all the six categories of residential, commercial, industrial and amenity plots, besides raising several other charges concerning the housing industry.

According to sources, the KBCA has already started charging enhanced charges and scrutiny fee with effect from Nov 14, 2007 without issuing a public notice.

The authority has also decided to levy infrastructure betterment charges on all those buildings which will be raised beyond ground-plus-four storeys.

The move is bound to further escalate prices of flats whose prices over the last four years have already gone up by more than 300 per cent as the builders of apartment buildings will obviously pass on the burden of the enhanced charges to buyers of apartments. KBCA officials insisted that the purpose of levying betterment charges was to generate revenue for the improvement of the city’s infrastructure.

Building plans

Referring to the scrutiny fee for the approval of first categories I to IV of residential plots, sources say that the existing fee of Rs5.62 per sq-ft has been raised to Rs8 per sq-ft and for categories V and VI from Rs5.62 to Rs6 per sq-ft. The scrutiny fee for the approval of building plans of commercial/public sale projects categories I, II, III and IV has been raised from Rs5.62 to Rs10 per sq-ft and for categories V and VI from Rs5.62 to Rs8 per sq-ft.

The fee in the case of all categories of industrial plots has been enhanced from Rs5.62 to Rs10 per sq-ft and for all categories of amenity plots from Rs5.62 to Rs6 per sq-ft.

The other fees or charges increased include attestation fee for building plans to be issued to the owners/allottees/adjoining neighbours. The attestation fee has been raised from Rs500 to Rs1,000.The infrastructure betterment charges for industrial/commercial/public sale projects/apartment buildings will be levied at the rate of Rs100 per square feet on the entire FAR (floor area ratio) permissible under the Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations (KB&TPR) 2002 while for the highrise zone in Clifton’s Blocks 1 to 4 (KDA Scheme-5) and other areas of the city where FAR has been raised to 1:9, the rates applicable will be Rs300 per square feet.

However, in the cases where enhanced FAR is not requested, the infrastructure betterment charges will be levied at the rate of Rs100 per sq-ft.

Moreover, the fee for issuance of licence to fresh category ‘A’ builder/developer in the case of a project costing above Rs500 million has been proposed to be fixed at Rs100,000 as against the existing fee of Rs30,000.

For fresh category ‘B’ builder/developer the proposed licence fee in the case of a project costing up to Rs500 million has been proposed to be Rs60,000 and for category ‘C’ in the case of a project costing up to Rs100 million the proposed fee is Rs30,000.

Similarly, the fee for the issuance of professional practising licence to architects, building designer, site engineers/town planners, structure/consulting engineers has been proposed to be raised from Rs500 to Rs5,000 and for the registration of proof engineers from Rs500 to Rs10,000.