A Ministry of Housing and Public Works proposal to build affordable flats in the capital’s Uttara suburb will likely be placed before the Cabinet Committee on Public Purchase today.
“The proposal to construct 8,400 flats with Malaysian government help will be placed at the cabinet committee meeting for approval,” Public Works Secretary Mohammad Moinuddin Abdullah yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune.
“We have decided to fix the per unit selling price at Tk4,500 per square foot for the 8,400 flats, whereas in the private sector the price is more than Tk6,000 per square foot,” Engineer Mosharraf Hossain, the minister for housing and public works, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
The flats are expected to cost Tk3,435 per square foot to build.
Credit facilities will allow buyers to repay the first half of their loans within three years, and the second half to be repaid over 15 years at an interest rate of 1.5 percent, the minister said.
The government plans to build 8,400 flats, part of an overall plan to construct 20,160 apartments in Uttara, to solve the housing problems of middle and lower income Dhaka residents.
In October 2011, the government approved the approximately Tk9,030cr project for the construction of 20,160 units.
It will be built on a design-build-transfer basis under the technical and financial management of the Malaysian government, sources said.
“We hope the construction of the flats will be completed by 2016,” Moinuddin
Malaysian private construction firms, Gemilang Land Development SDN Berhad and ALM-Gemilang Construction Ltd, will construct 100 16-storey buildings.
The total cost of the project is estimated to be Tk5,285.55cr to construct 15.3 million square feet of new housing space.