LAHORE, June 22: The Punjab Industrial Estate Development and Management Company will spend over Rs6 billion on the development of the Sundar Industrial Estate (SIE) in the city and a garment city near Faisalabad.

This was said by PIEDMC Chairman Mohsin M.Syed while addressing a press conference at the company head office here on Tuesday. He said a sum of Rs2.5 billion was expected to be spent on the development of the estate and Rs3.5 billion on the garment city. Five new industrial estates would be developed later on.

Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi will inaugurate the 1,500-acre estate in August. The construction of the buildings of industrial units will commence from September and will be completed in December.

The installation of machinery will be completed by March next year and trial production will start between April and June next year. The estate is expected to generate around 60,000 new job opportunities. Applications for the allotment of plots in the estate would be accepted from next month, he said.

Situated about 25 kilometres south of Lahore on the Manga Road, the SIE will comprise 286 plots measuring half to five acres. The company has acquired 1,500-acre barren land for the development of the estate at a cost of Rs400 million. The land has cost the company an average Rs250,000 per acre and developed plots will be sold for around Rs3 million per acre.

Arable land near the Multan Road will cost Rs1 million per acre and the company will have to spend an extra Rs600 million on the land acquisition alone. The company has procured a soft loan of Rs1 billion from the Punjab government against an estimated development cost of Rs2.5 billion. It would generate the rest of resources on its own, he added.

Mr Mohsin Syed said the company had decided to develop the garment city near Faisalabad instead of Sundar because of the concentration of textile industry there. The company had acquired 150 acres from the Punjab Small Industries Corporation and given the industrial estate management board there for development.

Sheds would be built at the plots in the estate for the installation of the weaving, dying, finishing and stitching units, he added. The PIEDMC chairman said industrial estates to be developed by the company at Sundar and other places would be meant for small and medium industrial units.

The estates would have water and power supply, sewerage and telecommunication facilities along with combined effluent treatment plants. Parking areas, roads, fire brigade, hospitals, police stations, banks, insurance and public transport services would also be provided.

The company would also devise a mechanism for disposal of plots, infrastructure and machinery of the sick industrial units at a nominal loss of around 10 per cent. He claimed that apart from the development of the new industrial estates on 'no profit no loss basis,' the company was also engaged in the rehabilitation of the infrastructure of the existing estates at Multan and Kot Lakhpat in Lahore.

Twenty industrial plots lying vacant for the past 30 years due to poor infrastructure facilities in the Multan Industrial Estate had been sold following the commencement of the rehabilitation of the sewerage and road infrastructure from Rs100 million provided by the government and Rs30 million made available as a result of the disposal of plots.