The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) estimated that the overall production of housing units has to be increased to 0.5 million units annually to address 6.1 million backlog of housing in Pakistan for meeting the housing shortfall in next 20 years.
This was stated in a report of KCCI sub-committee on housing, construction industry and infrastructure. The sub-committee has also extracted statistical date, which showed that there was backlog of 6.1 million houses in Pakistan, while annual requirement of housing units each year was 670,000 units.
It is, however, a matter of great concern that the present accomplishment is only 270,000 units per annum instead. Therefore, the extensive disparity is taking its toll with addition of 300,000 units every year in the backlog out of which the annual requirement of Karachi comes to 170,000 units alone. The report said that the port cities all over the world always played significant role in the economic well being of the nations. Karachi is the only port city of the country and its participation in the economy is worked out to 68 percent of the total revenues collected by the government exchequer.
The report noted that there were 482 katchi abadies in Karachi in year 1984 but it had increased so rapidly to reach 1471 katchi abadies in 2005. The report stressed the need to plan a course of the swelling population of the city.
According to housing census 1998, the housing backlog, which stood at 4.30 million, has been currently projected at 6.19 million. The report said that the present housing stock is also rapidly ageing and an estimate suggests that more than 50 percent stock is over 50 years old. It is also estimated that 50 percent of the urban population now lives in slums and squatter settlements. The report said that meeting the backlog in housing, besides replacement out-lived housing unit is beyond the finical resources of the government. This necessitates putting in place of framework to facilitate financing in the formal private sector and mobilise non-government resources for a market base housing finance system.