New Delhi, February 02, 2018: “While the announcement of the affordable housing fund and increase in allocation towards infrastructure have brought the much-needed hope for the real estate sector, the lack of inclusion of announcements relating to lowering of GST and bringing stamp duty under the ambit of GST has been highly discouraging.
The government’s announcement to establish a dedicated affordable housing fund in the National Housing Bank through various funding measures will give the much-needed boost to the realty sector. As part of this measure, almost 31 lakh homes are to be built in urban areas in 2018-2019 and 51 lakh in rural areas.
Infrastructure has also received a major boost in this Budget. Rs 5.97 lakh crore has been allocated for development of infrastructure across the country Rs 2.04 lakh crore towards smart cities. This move will definitely boost the real estate sector in the long-term as development of infrastructure is one of the major hurdles facing the industry. Bengaluru also stands to gain from this announcement with Rs17,000 crore allocated for the development of a 160-km of suburban railway network for the city. Bengaluru is in need of an alternative mode of transport that will offer some relief to its traffic woes.
Beyond these measures, what is needed to revive the sector are a few steps that go beyond. Giving infrastructure status across the range of the sector to cover not just the affordable segment but also the accessible luxury and others could have pepped up the sector as also a host of industries that depend on real estate. The industry was also pinning hopes on the budget for some relief in the form of a drop in GST rates from the current 12 per cent to 6 per cent and inclusion of stamp duty under the ambit of GST. However, none of these found a mention in Mr Jaitley’s Budget.”
Corporate Comm India(CCI Newswire)
