PESHAWAR, May 22: Industrial estates in the NWFP present an ideal opportunity to the ‘land mafia’ where money is invested not for industrial purposes but to earn profits through speculative real estate business, some government officials and industrialists told Dawn on Tuesday.

The non-functional portions of the industrial estates have turned into ‘real estate markets’ rather than becoming a hub of industrial activities, they added.

On the one hand, the involvement of the ‘mafia’ in industrial estates is causing a shortage of plots for genuine industrialists, while on the other it is pushing the prices up, which subsequently increases the cost of doing business, according to them.

Citing an example, the officials said the Industrial Estate Peshawar had a total of 438 plots. Only 202 industrial units were functioning there, while the rest of the industrial area remained unutilised.

Similarly, 203 plots in Gadoon, 191 in Hattar and 18 remain unutilised in the Nowshera Industrial Estate, they claimed.

An industrialist, on condition of anonymity, said he was intending to acquire 1 acre of land for a small industrial project in the Peshawar Industrial Estate, but could not do so mainly because of the paucity of reasonably prised plots.

The official price of a 1 acre plot at the industrial estate was Rs0.4 million, whereas its market price ranged between Rs5 and Rs7 million, he said. The same situation prevailed at the Hattar, Gadoon Amazai and Nowshera industrial estates where plots were being sold at much higher prices as compared to the official prices.