Good discussion.
Take the expat out of the equation here. Think from a local investor perspective running a factory. He/She produces goods and focuses on eventually providing import substitution and value addition. Has to deal with X number of government institutions to get permission, licenses, audit, tax done. Add to it the work to get the whole supply chain and managing resources.
And on the other end of the spectrum, you have investors flipping properties with virtually no tax. Even the transaction fee payable is 1/10 of the real value. There is no headache of dealing with government institutions. No source of income and most of the business is in black through hawala hundi.
The DHA, Naval Societies, KDAs, Bahrias have been going on for a good 3-4 decades. Both expats and local investors have been investing in plots since time immemorial. The side effects unfortunately are that the money is parked into plots and not into research or value addition.
This trends need to be reversed. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to enact policies to incentivise industries and disincentivise property investments.
Take the expat out of the equation here. Think from a local investor perspective running a factory. He/She produces goods and focuses on eventually providing import substitution and value addition. Has to deal with X number of government institutions to get permission, licenses, audit, tax done. Add to it the work to get the whole supply chain and managing resources.
And on the other end of the spectrum, you have investors flipping properties with virtually no tax. Even the transaction fee payable is 1/10 of the real value. There is no headache of dealing with government institutions. No source of income and most of the business is in black through hawala hundi.
The DHA, Naval Societies, KDAs, Bahrias have been going on for a good 3-4 decades. Both expats and local investors have been investing in plots since time immemorial. The side effects unfortunately are that the money is parked into plots and not into research or value addition.
This trends need to be reversed. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to enact policies to incentivise industries and disincentivise property investments.