20 companies to construct 250,000 low-cost housing units in Iraq
Mayor of Baghdad says that 50,000 low cost units will be built in Baghdad
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In a step to meet its national housing crisis, Iraq has announced the construction of 250,000 low cost housing units, operations for which will be undertaken by 20 specialised companies, as per Naeem Ab’oub al-Ka’bi, mayor of Baghdad.
Al-Ka’bi added 50,000 units will be built in Baghdad, with the rest planned to be distributed around Iraq’s other provinces. Former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, as per a report by Iraqi news agency Awsat al-Iraq, “ordered to have contracts with 20 specialised companies” to carry out the project.
As of September 2013, Iraq was facing a severe housing crisis, and was expected to complete only 5% of the 2.5 million homes it needs to build by 2016 to meet demand, the country’s minister for construction and housing had informed at the time.
Mohammed al-Daraji had also predicted that the private sector would take up most of these construction projects.
“Unless there’s direct investment from foreign investors there won’t be a solution. We’ve had a problem for the last 40 years. I’m not going to solve it in 2-3 years”, he said.
“That’s why I say it’s a crisis,” he added.
As per estimates from 2013, Iraq needed to build 2.5 million new housing units by the end of 2016. Al-Daraji estimated that only 130,000 of those will actually get built, with the private sector building 100,000 of those.
These figures may have increased following the recent political turmoil in the country, with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stating in August 2014 that “there are more than 1.2 million internally displaced people in Iraq.”
