Iraq will soon invite developers for the construction of six new residential cities within a post-war drive to tackle a severe housing crisis, an official said in comments on Friday.

The Construction and Housing Ministry has already unveiled projects for five cities and is in the process of announcing locations for six more such projects, Ministry Nabeel Al-Saffar told the official Iraqi news agency.

Saffar said the six new cities would be offered on partnership basis and that only developers with strong resources would be accepted.

“We have already offered five such projects as an investment to the private sector…we will soon open the bids for these projects,” he said.

“There are six other cities that will be built through Iraq…we expect to finish procedures for these projects soon and they will be again offered to investors.”

Saffar said these cities comprise thousands of houses unlike residential compounds which “include limited number of costly units and do not help in resolving the housing problem in Iraq.”

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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