ISLAMABAD: Haroon Akhtar Khan, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Revenue, has said that there is not much difference between current market prices and official (determined by the district commissioner) rates.
Haroon, while talking to media, said that the difference is more profound in the two cities than elsewhere. These rates had been set for working out stamp duties on property transactions, which eventually became a base for determining income gains and hiding the real values of properties, he added.
The Special Assistant to PM said that the FBR has completed the valuation exercise, adding that there was no major difference between the valuations worked out by the Federal Board of Revenue and the values assessed by the government-hired experts. He said the information has also been exchanged with the real estate sector representatives.
He said that in case of Karachi, the values of the properties were 5 times to 13 times higher than the DC rates. Similarly, in case of Islamabad, the difference between DC rate and fair market value was in the range of 8 times to 15 times. The fair market value of the properties in Peshawar was about 6 times to 8 times more than the DC rates.
Haroon said the difference was not much in case of Lahore due to occasional increase in DC rates. Akhtar said that in case of small cities, the gap between the official DC rates and fair market value was also not big.
