Committee closes meeting held regarding Tata flat rent rates

People’s Majlis Public Finance Committee barred media from the meeting held on Monday to discuss the issue increase in Tata flat rent rates after government was required to pay a huge sum of money in bulk to the company with the completion of the project.

The Committee was scheduled to discuss documents related to the case during the meeting.

Public Finance Committee made the decision to evaluate the contract after tenants were asked to pay MVR 2 million within 5 years – which comes up to MVR 33,000 per month.

Committee members said that price of the flats went up because of the huge amount of money government has to pay Tata in bulk with the completion of the project.

Tata was awarded the contract with “special incentives”, which includes them having to be paid USD 18 million (MVR 277.5 million) with the completion of the project.

Committee members noted that Tata was awarded the contract with “special incentives” as

Tata has been given the ground floor, first floor and second floor for 50 years, given Lh. Losalafushi to develop a resort, and exempted from having to pay duty for equipment and material brought into the country from abroad for the project.

A joint venture was made between Tata Housing, Apex Realty and SG18 Developers for the project.

The 11-storey buildings built in the two plots of land – Gaa Koshi and former Arabiya School - has total 319 apartments.

Original contract to build the housing units was signed in May, 2010.

Work on building the housing units came to a standstill in February, 2011, but was started again in the beginning of 2015 with amendments to the contract.