Auction of centre’s idle land assets approved

E-Paper | May 03, 2026

ISLAMABAD: The Cabinet Committee on Privatisation (CCoP) approved the open auction budding of 27 unproductive land assets owned by the federal government on Tuesday.

The reference price of the 27 land assets is estimated to be over Rs6.5 billion, according to Secretary Privatisation Commission Rizwan Malik. He further told Dawn that the bidding process would start in March and is expected to be completed by April.

The board of the Privatisation Commission has already designed the transaction structure of the sale of the unproductive land assets which was approved by the cabinet committee meeting, chaired by Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, according to an official press release.

There had been 32 unproductive lands owned by federal government entities, of which five were deleted from the list. Out of these, two land assets in Karachi and one in Lahore, valued at more than Rs5 billion, will now be utilised under the Naya Pakistan housing scheme as decided by the government.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2020

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Amin Ahmed is an Islamabad-based correspondent for Dawn with nearly two decades of experience in the field. He reports on socio-economic development, agriculture, and privatisation, as well as parliamentary committees.

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Jamal

Feb 05, 2020 11:51am

More broadly, with respect to real estate, subsequent change of use and other miscellaneous permissions may make even more money for some individuals but result in permanent traffic problems in addition to putting a huge strain on infrastructure which has to be paid for by the citizens. In general, no one but the state should enjoy a windfall (which should be calculated given the real market prices and also at a minimum cover the cost of installation and maintenance of additional physical infrastructure). Further, buildings, particularly high-rises, should only be permitted keeping in view the abilities of the fire department and water supply and parking spaces be required in line with high density western standards rather than the current ones which result in parking on roads leading to more (and deliberately inflicted) traffic misery. Lastly, the ground floors should be set back from the roads to allow for future expansion of roads.

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M. Saeed

Feb 05, 2020 06:53pm

There are hundreds of unproductive CDA/Government lands in the Blue Area Islamabad, each of which can generate much more revenue than all the 27 lands mentioned in the news above, combined.

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