Pre-Budget Comments of Mr. Sushanto Roy, Head – Infrastructure & Housing, Sahara Prime City Limited
For acceleration of growth in the economy, Infrastructure & Housing impetus is required to be taken forward by the budget. There is an urgent need to accord long overdue industry status to the Real Estate sector. This will result in bringing about rationalization of taxes and duties specially for developing residential properties, easing up of liquidity and interest rates, institutional finance structuring and introduction of regulatory mechanisms. Tax holiday for developing townships in tier II and III cities, reinstatement of section 80IB (10), rationalization of service tax, introduction of REIT & REMF for retail investors will overall improve sentiment to boost up the industry. Measures such as easing up of interest rates and priority lending bracket, increase in exemption limits for income tax benefits will benefit the end users. For making housing affordable, incentives to developers for developing low cost and budget housing alongwith availability of subsidized rates of interest to the end users, needs to be taken up on a priority basis.
