Real estate developers on February 1 hailed the government's decision to allocate Rs 48,000 crore in Budget under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) and faster approvals for affordable housing in urban areas but rued that no additional tax deduction was allowed on interest paid on home loans.
"Allocation of Rs 48,000 crores towards completion of 80 lakh homes under PMAY is a welcome step. FM also announced that approvals related to land and construction particularly for Affordable Housing in the urban areas will be given priority," CREDAI President Harshvardhan Patodia said. He also welcomed the government's focus on urban planning, especially in tier II and III cities.
Boman Irani – President, CREDAI-MCHI, said there has been an introduction of a revolutionary reform — one land and one registration system — which is beneficial for the real estate ecosystem. "…though the real estate industry analysts and developers community were hoping for some more rebates given its performance and contribution to the overall economy in the past few months. A simple point that could have added cheer to home buyers would be an increase in tax deduction for home loan interest," he added.
NAREDCO President Rajan Bandelkar said there were several provisions in the Union Budget which will positively impact the real estate sector and cited the example of focus on the development of logistics parks. "Easing land and construction-related approvals will help the development firms in meeting the delivery timelines," he added. However, Bandelkar said the sector was expecting more in terms of incentives to boost sales and fulfill the dream of 'Housing for All' by 2022.
NAREDCO Vice-Chairman Niranjan Hiranandani welcomed the focus to resolve long-standing issues of reduction in approval timelines for land and construction. "The government's proposal to cut down the approval time related to land and construction will bring ease of doing business. The real estate sector will also be benefitted from announcements related to industrial & logistics and data centers, enabling them to aggressively diversify into these two upcoming asset classes," said Dhruv Agarwala, group CEO of Housing.com and PropTiger.
Tata Realty & Infrastructure MD and CEO Sanjay Dutt said: "The allocation of Rs 48,000 crore to housing projects with an aim to build 80 lakh residences for PM Awas Yojana for FY23 is a much-needed push to create newer and affordable inventories for home buyers." "We appreciate the central government's intervention to expedite all land and construction-related approvals to promote affordable housing for the middle class and economically weaker sections in urban areas," he said.
"The Special Economic Zones Act will be replaced with new legislation that will enable the states to become partners in 'Development of Enterprise and Service Hubs'. The industry expects the new policy to ensure domestic companies be able to utilize the SEZ infrastructure, and the policy shall enable unit by unit denotification," Dutt said. Godrej Properties Ltd MD and CEO Mohit Malhotra said the ambitious commitment to allocate Rs 48,000 crore towards 'Housing for All' has reinforced the government's determination to boost affordable housing in the country.
"Moreover, the budget has laid the foundation of stronger urban development with sheer measures to revamp the housing challenge in the urban areas," he added. Prestige group CMD Irfan Razack said the Union Budget 2022 holds a visionary and ambitious sentiment.
"It allocated a substantial thrust towards infrastructure development, urbanization, agriculture and digitization which will help in overall economic growth including employment generation. The prices of steel industry and import of raw materials remains unchanged which will provide the much required relief and impetus to the real estate and ancillary sectors," he said. Brigade Enterprises CMD M R Jaishankar said the Budget 2022 has laid emphasis on building a road map for a strong India to reach a USD 5 trillion economy.
"There are many positives, though not much for our Real Estate sector and the middle class. But ECLGS is a very welcome relief to the much-affected MSMEs and hospitality sector," he added.
Puravankara Ltd MD Ashish R Puravankara said "with regards to the housing sector, we are pleased that the government has revoked custom duties levied on stainless steel and High Steel Bars. We are hopeful that these savings are passed down to the developers so that the end-users can benefit; this is yet to be determined."
Santosh Agarwal, CFO and Executive Director, Alpha Corp, said the Budget will provide a much-needed impetus to the housing demand in the affordable segment. Sandeep Runwal – President, NAREDCO-Maharashtra and Managing Director, Runwal Group, said: "For the first time the Finance Minister has sought to transform the real estate sector by bringing in transparency and efficiency in the business. This will help to reduce the cost of transaction and will ultimately benefit the homebuyers."
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