Iraq is planning to build 20 new residential cities in and around the capital Baghdad to ease congestion in the city and tackle a festering housing supply shortage.

The construction and housing ministry has launched studies for the allocation of sufficient land to accommodate the new satellite cities.

“The ministry has started preparing studies for the allocation and expansion of land needed to accommodate 20 new cities in the Baghdad province,” the ministry’s spokesman Nabil Al-Saffar said in local press comments on Monday.

He said the ministry is also pushing ahead with plans to build an administrative capital In Baghdad similar to Egypt's NewAdministrative Capital.

Officials reported this year that the ministry has received bids from four Egyptian companies and other foreign developers to build the administrative capital.

‘Al-Rafeel City,’ with an area of 265 square kilometres, will accommodate more than 75,000 people and comprise houses, government offices as well as commercial, education, health and amusement facilities.

Last year, Egypt’s ORA Developers was awarded the main contract for a new mega residential city ‘Ali Al-Wardi, located in the southeast of Baghdad.

Ali Al-Wardi is one of about 10 contracts awarded over the past three years to construct new cities that could house more than two million people.

The planning ministry said in a study in 2024 that Iraq, OPEC’s second largest oil producer, needs to build at least three million houses for citizens in the next five years to shore up the supply gap.