Egypt’s Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities Assem El Gazzar has announced that the ministry-affiliated New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) has received 2,035 land allocation requests over 2020.
The requests were made over the course of the last year as part of a market-oriented mechanism for land allocations, covering 737 plots of land totalling 5,500 feddan.
El Gazzar said that about 35% of these lands’ value will be paid in US dollar through a transfer from abroad, with the mechanism to provide more than 2m direct and indirect job opportunities.
Waleed Abbas, Assistant Housing Minister for NUCA Affairs, said that the authority’s planning sector has issued approximately 124 ministerial approvals to urban designs and the planning of real estate and services projects. These have a combined total area of about 75,000 feddan in 15 new cities.
Abbas added that small residential lands were offered to enable citizens of all social segments to build their family homes, as about 3,098 land plots, covering 185 feddan, were provided in 2020 within the social housing sector.
This comes in addition to 2,895 plots of land covering a total of 345 feddan, alongside 1,042 fully finished luxury housing units which have been allocated to Egyptian expatriates.
Abbas said that the ministry has offered about 137,000 housing units to Egyptian citizens, including 7,796 units which were offered as part of the government’s Jannah, Dar Misr, and Sakan Misr housing projects.
“NUCA’s planning sector has approved seven general masterplans for the cities of New Malawi, New Fashn, New 6th of October, New Qena Expansions, New Luxor, New Sphinx, and New Rashid,” Abbas said, “This is in addition to approving detailed plans for development areas in some cities, including the Latin Neighborhood in New Alamein, districts in New Tiba, areas in Sheikh Zayed, and beach area of New Alamein City with a total area of nearly 300,000 feddan.”
He noted that a monitoring unit for new urban communities has been established within NUCA’s planning and projects sector. The unit aims to measure and evaluate the efficiency of performance and efficiency of plans and policies that are taken, in order to achieve sustainable comprehensive urban development for new urban communities.
The unit will measure the progress of the urban sustainable development process in new cities, through the development of the targeted development plans, and the preservation of a sophisticated urban development situation.
