Author: Mr. Surendra Hiranandani, Chairman and Managing Director, House of Hiranandani
The union budget presented is visionary and has focused on the nation’s growth. With its focus on the agricultural and rural sectors, infrastructure, health, education, job creation, digital economy, etc, it is a holistic budget that will have an overall positive impact on the economy . With the growth outlook looking promising and support in terms of government spending, we will witness a noteworthy traction in the real estate sector too this year. The government has played a tough balancing act between providing demand impetus and keeping a watch on fiscal deficit.
Though real estate has not got anything directly from this budget, there are announcements that will indirectly help the sector. Allotment of a massive capital expenditure corpus in order to enhance and support national highway projects, roads and other ancillary infrastructure shows the continued commitment of the Government to strengthen connectivity across the country which in turn will largely improve real estate over the next few years.
While affordable housing continued to remain a priority area for the government with few additional reforms, the government could have given further boost to real estate which fuels the Indian economy as it is the second largest employer after agriculture and supports over 250-allied industries.
There have been many pressing concerns in the real sector that have not been addressed such as easing liquidity, reduction in levies/taxes, tax deductions on home loans to give impetus to buyer sentiment, granting of industry status to the overall real estate sector and implementation of single window clearance amongst others.
Overall, while the social sector has received good support and is welcome, we are convinced that the government will do its best to get the economy to bounce back, and sustain long term growth of the real estate sector too with substantial measures in the near future. We also hope that there will be more announcements soon to enhance ease of doing business for the developers and are optimistic that with green shoots in the economy in sight, the real estate sector is ready for explosive growth in the post pandemic era.