KARACHI, Aug 6: The Defence Housing Authority is purchasing 12,000 acres near the toll plaza on Superhighway from the Sindh government. A senior official of the DHA told Dawn that the large piece of land, comprising over 58.1 million square yards, was being purchased at Rs100,000 per acre. He added that the land thus acquired would become the DHA’s Phase IX.

“The DHA has leased out 8,000 acres in all the eight phases to buyers for 99 years. It badly needs land for its Phase IX,” said Col Mohammad Younus, additional director of the DHA’s land department.

He recalled that the Sindh government had fixed the price of the land at Rs25,000 per acre in 1992.

“But the then deputy commissioner of Malir carried out a survey of the land and fixed the price at Rs50,000 per acre. When the matter went to the Sindh cabinet, they decided that the price should be fixed at Rs100,000 per acre. This decision came last year, and when the deal materializes, we will pay Rs1.2 billion to the Sindh government,” he explained.

The official said the area being purchased by the DHA was extremely undeveloped and uneven. He added that the DHA would have to spend a lot of money simply to make the area habitable.

Col Younus said the DHA would sort out a payment mechanism with the Sindh government. He added that the DHA would like to pay a token money upfront followed by a mutually agreed schedule of payment over 10 years.

The member of the Board of Revenue’s land utilization department, Khalid Mehmood Soomro, said he had no idea what rate had been fixed by the Sindh government for the piece of land being purchased by the DHA. Conceding that the deal between the DHA and the Sindh government would be executed by his department, he maintained that the rate of Rs100,000 per acre was very low.

A real estate broker told Dawn that the deal of Phase IX would have little immediate effect on prices in the remaining phases of the DHA.

“People invest in the DHA for two reasons: proximity to the sea and transparency in land deals. Those who acquire land in Phase IX would not be close to the sea, but they would take advantage of the transparent manner in which land deals are carried out in the DHA,” he said.