A senior official from the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs for Cities Planning says there are no more large pieces of land in the capital city that can be used for housing. This is the claim of Engineer Fareed Sheera, Assistant Undersecretary at the ministry. He made these comments after the General Housing Commission asked the ministry for a 30 million sq. meter piece of land for housing projects. “The ministry has seriously tried to respond to the commission's demand but it has found it very difficult to secure such an area inside Riyadh because there is not any piece of unoccupied land in Riyadh at the moment.” He said the ministry is trying to secure such an area with residential plots. He said the ministry has recently handed a 100 million sq. meter piece of land to the commission near Hafr Al-Baten. Sheera said the ministry offers land to government agencies according to the actual need and not just to meet their demands. He said the ministry has adopted a new strategy, which is to give the government agencies licenses to start their projects before the issue of title deeds by notaries public. This is to avoid any delay in construction because it can take a while for title deeds to be issued.
