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Iraqi has prepared designs for 20 new residential cities as part of a post-war campaign to tackle a housing crisis, the country’s Construction and Housing Minister has said.
Benkin Rikani told a housing conference in Baghdad on Wednesday that Iraq is suffering from a cumulative housing supply shortage which he said was exacerbated by a steady growth in the population since 2003.
In his comments, published by the Iraqi News Agency on Thursday, the Minister said only around 7,000 government-funded housing units have been built over the past 20 years.
“There are more than 50 housing projects across Iraq but some of them have stalled since 2014 because of lack of funds...now we have devised a new policy of building new residential cities and we have finished the designs for 20 of them,” he said.
Rikani said three cities would be constructed in the capital Baghdad and that work would start shortly to build motorways linking these cities, adding: “A number of big foreign developers are competing for these cities.”
(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)
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