ISLAMABAD, Oct 06 (INP): President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) Sheikh Amir Waheed has said that real estate sector is playing a key role in the economic development of the country, but was facing problems due to imposition of heavy taxes and government should rationalize taxes on this important sector to facilitate the growth of business activities. He stated this while addressing a delegation of Islamabad Real Estate Welfare Group led by Group Leader Ch. Abdul Rauf that visited ICCI to congratulate the new office bearers of the Chamber here on Friday. Sheikh Amir Waheed said that business of thousands of people was directly or indirectly linked with real estate sector but increase of taxes has slumped the business activities in this sector which would impact economic growth of the country as well. He said due to tax problems, many investors were leaving the real estate sector and cautioned that if government did not pay urgent attention to its issues, unemployment would further go up in the country. Senior Vice President Muhammad Naveed and Vice President ICCI Nisar Ahmed Mirza assured the delegation that Chamber would raise their issues at all relevant forums for solution and would fully cooperate in efforts to provide relief to this sector. Speaking at the occasion, leader of Islamabad Real Estate Welfare Group and former President, Islamabad Estate Agents Association, Ch. Abdul Rauf highlighted various issues of real estate sector. He said increase in taxes on property has badly affected real estate business and urged that government should revise these taxes to provide relief to realtors. He said that CDA has increased commercialization fee on real estate sector that has created additional problems and urged that CDA should bring down said fee. He said Chairman CDA had approved 14 reforms of real estate sector that have not been implemented as yet due to which problems still persisted. Chaudhry Abdul Rauf said that G-13, G-14 and some other sectors were started long time ago, but were not developed as yet and called upon the CDA and Housing Foundation to focus on early development of old sectors to ease the problems of allottees. M. Ejaz Abbasi, Rana Akram, Arshad Abbasi, Hasan Akhtar, Mian Maqbool, Nadeem Gujjar, Waheed Cheema, Khalid Chaudhry, Raja Safeer, Malik Najeeb, Muhammad Hussain, Adil Anis, Ashfaq Chatha, Ch. Irfan, Raja Majeed, Yasir Abbasi and representatives of various markets also spoke at the occasion and called upon the government to resolve problems of real estate sector for better growth of economy. INP/SB/AK