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Realtors protest

Sahara deal will ruin local sector

. Staff Reporter
The country's real estate sector entrepreneurs on Saturday have strongly protested the government's move of allowing Sahara's investments in the local real estate and housing business.
The industry leaders raised their voice at a press conference in the city yesterday.
"They said, foreign investment is a good for the country's development. It encourages competition and qualitative development of both the domestic and foreign companies. But giving special privileges to the foreign companies over local real estate and housing sector," will bring destructive impact on it," they said.
Sahara Group, India's real estate giant, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bangladesh government recently to invest in four modern low-cost township projects in the suburbs of the capital.
Mentioning the deal, the realtors of the country said government is providing special privileges to the Sahara Group including land acquisition at low cost. If government gives the same privileges, to the local companies they will be able to develop modern satellite city of international standard.  One has not to go to foreign companies for it, they said.
 "The real estate and housing sector in Bangladesh is under severe threat due to insufficient supply of gas, electricity and land. Many local companies are about to close their business. In this situation, allowing Sahara Group of India to invest with special government privileges in this sector will just force the local entrepreneurs to stop business in the sector," they added.    
Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh (REHAB) and Bangladesh Land Developers Association (BLDA) spoke on the occasion.
President of REHAB Nasrul Hamid MP, president of BLDA Ahmed Akbar Sobhan, secretary general of BLDA Mustafa Kamal Mohiuddin, former president of REHAB Tanveerul Haque Probal and managing director of Building Technology and Ideas Limited FR Khan were present at the press meet among others.
According to Indian media reports, the business conglomerate, Sahara Group, is going to invest 800 billion rupees in Bangladesh. The group has already selected 40 square kilometres of land in the outskirts of Dhaka city, to implement their housing projects.
Noting the Sahara's amount of investment in the sector, the BLDA president said if government gives the same facilities to us, REHAB and BLDA can alone invest much more than what Sahara would invest.  
"Sahara's investment will only launder the money to India rather  bringing reinvestment in Bangladesh," BLDA president added. 
The realtor leaders also said local entrepreneurs have developed the sector by investing a large chunk of capital, mostly from bank borrowing and created skilled workforce. At the moment, it is not acceptable that foreign companies would reap the benefits. 
"Sahara is a large capital base company and its financial solvency  will out maneuver local companies to create an uneven competition and bring destruction to the local housing sector," they added.