Karbala breaks ground on Iraq’s 1M-plot housing plan

Shafaq News- Karbala

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Faleh Al-Zaidi on Saturday laid the foundation stone in Karbala for the Watan Initiative, a nationwide project aimed at distributing one million residential land plots.

Al-Zaidi arrived in Karbala earlier in the day and met Governor Nassif Jassim Al-Khattabi.

In mid-September, Iraq’s National Investment Commission selected Karbala as the first province to begin implementing the initiative, while preparations for land allocations continue in several other provinces.

Iraq has faced a housing shortage for decades, with the Ministry of Construction, Housing and Municipalities estimating that the country needs around five million additional housing units to meet growing demand. Since 2003, successive governments have launched numerous housing initiatives and large-scale residential projects aimed at reducing the deficit, but most have failed to achieve their intended goals, leaving the crisis largely unresolved.

Official estimates of Iraq’s informal housing population vary widely, ranging from about three million to more than nine million people. Separately, the Planning Ministry has estimated that around 104,000 fully informal housing units accommodate between 500,000 and 600,000 people.