KARACHI, March 10: Huge outflow of capital from the country has found its way into real estate business in Dubai, where many Pakistani developers have entered into joint ventures with their local counterparts to reap windfall profits, business sources said.

The boom in construction industry in the Gulf emirate has attracted Pakistani entrepreneurs to avail the opportunity at a time when the textile industry, country’s biggest industrial sector, has been passing through a crisis for the last over two years.

Since Dubai has become the world business and trade hub, many Western and Far Eastern multinational companies have set up their offices from where they interact with their counterparts around the globe.

There is an increasing demand for housing as well as commercial centres, which has generated a construction boom attracting investors from around the globe.

The textile exporters after loosing hope of getting any support from the government for ensuring their viability and competitiveness at the global level are winding up their establishments and moving out their capital to Dubai to make easy money in real estate, a textile tycoon requesting anonymity told Dawn.

“The greatest advantage in Dubai is the stable cost of inputs and un-interpreted supply of power with no hassle to deal with large number of government agencies and departments,” lamented a leading businessman, who flew back after entering into a big real estate deal in Dubai

He further said that there were no apprehensions about the law and order or political instability and the business organisation only have to worry about their business deals and transactions.

Contrary to this, he said that when doing business in Pakistan every person became ‘parasite’ including the government departments.

Giving details of the construction industry boom in Dubai, he said, on booking a property a huge margin is earned within couple of weeks and these funds could be again invested in another property.

He said an apartment booked at a cost of around Rs10 million was disposed of at Rs10.10 million in a matter of two weeks time.

Similarly, he said there were many avenues in indenting and trading business, where quick money is made without entering into the hassle of running an industrial set up. Even on setting up an industry, he said, there are fixed rules of the game and every entrepreneur knew about his cost and profit margins.

He said that some leading Pakistani developers were already engaged in construction projects with locals and were involved in big housing and commercial projects.

He said during the tenure of former prime minister Shaukat Aziz only banks made windfall profits followed by the telecom industry. The biggest ‘crime’ of his government was that it converted the country into a consumer society and also widened the gap between the haves and haves not.

Last year, he said banks made profits of Rs68 billion and this year’s profits were Rs76 billion, which indicates the robust financial health of the banks.