The Prime Minister of Pakistan has recently announced a substantial incentive package for Pakistan’s construction industry. The construction industry is one of the highest contributors to the country’s economy by accounting for 2.5% of the country’s GDP and bringing in US$ 386.8 million of net foreign direct investments during 2018-19.
With the vision of fulfilling the housing gap, the Prime Minister of Pakistan has launched the “Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme”. This initiative is planned to build 5 million affordable houses in 5 years.
The scheme is expected to bring investments of around US$20 to US$25 billion from a number of countries.
Under the construction industry’s incentive package, investors investing in the Naya Pakistan Housing scheme will be exempted from 90% fixed tax and withholding tax. In addition, a subsidy of Rs.30 billion has been approved for this housing scheme.
Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme is an initiative by the current government which has also envisioned a Clean and Green future for our country. So, one can logically assume that this housing scheme being launched in todays “Clean and Green Pakistan” will also be a ‘Green Housing Scheme’.
The “Naya Pakistan”is supposed to be a cleaner and greener Pakistan. So, by equating logic, all the schemes launched by the current government should be inherently and ultimately promoting the Clean and Green vision. Then why are the 5 million houses being built under this initiative not being planned to be Green Houses/ Buildings? The current publicly available information on this housing scheme has no mention of the houses being built according to Green Building standards.
If this Scheme is not implemented as a Green housing scheme then itcanprove to be contradictory to the Clean and Green Pakistan vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan. Rather than reducing environmental degradation, it can potentially increase numerous forms of pollution in the already environmentally unsustainable country.
source: this article has been taken from pakobserver.net
