The government will be deprived of a large amount of revenue in land registration fees for the current fiscal year following its decision of not giving gas and power connections to new apartments, realtors said Monday. The decision has led to a drastic fall in the purchase of apartments. However, the government has set a condition to give power connections to clients provided they have provisions for solar panels. According to them, other reasons apart from the slump in revenue collection from land registration fees, have also added to the bad days facing the real estate sector. Sheltech managing director (MD) Toufiq M Seraj told the FE, "Flat buyers register his or her land after receiving a new apartment. Around 12,000 flats are yet to be handed over to the buyers, which is depriving the government of revenue worth around Tk 6.0 billion in land registration." He said, "Many flat buy -ers have stopped paying installments as he or she has to pay extra house rents, bank interest on their loans and other charges which is also having impacts on the realtors' cost. At the same time, the developers are forced to count penalty for crossing the deadline set for flat handover." An apartment buyer, Malek Hossain told the FE, "I had to receive my flat at Shantinagar a few months ago without gas connection as I have waited for a long time for the connection." "But after paying rents for a house, bank interest etc I can't bear the burden any more and I received the flat. Now I have to buy two Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders a month for cooking food," he said. Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh (REHAB) officials said that they count the sales after they hand over a flat to a client and register it. But no registration took place in the last one year. REHAB has around 896 members across the country, of which 826 are in Dhaka, 50 in Chittagong and the rest are in other districts. The construction work of around 3600 flats of 300 housing projects has come to a grinding halt due to lack of power connections, REHAB said in a recent statement. Echoing the realtors' body, the Sheltech MD said, "Due to lack of gas and power connections the pace of construction work of our company has reduced by around 25 per cent. As days go by, the situation will turn worse which might hit the real estate sector badly." "Around 2.0 million workers are involved with the construction work directly and indirectly, all of whom will be affected if the sector enters bad times," he added. He urged the government to introduce pre-paid meters for gas and electricity for domestic users and increase the power and gas bills for the commercial users which would lead to prudent use of energy. He said, "The people who use power for wedding ceremony, festival and market decoration should pay much higher than the domestic users. It might help reduce the use of power." He also urged the government to rethink about resumption of giving power and gas connections to the consumers thus saving the real estate sector of the country.
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