New Delhi, Feb 1 The Union Budget FY23 has gone down well with the real estate developers who welcomed the Centre's thrust on renewed capital expenditure.
"For instance, the establishment of a logistics network in the country will provide an impetus to the development of infrastructure in the country. It will positively affect the development of the housing sector along the corridors," said Rajan Bandelkar, President of National Real Estate Development Council (NREDC).
To sustain the high growth rate, the Centre has earmarked a big budgetary outlay of Rs 7.50 lakh crore for FY23.
In her Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to increase the capital budget outlay by over 35 per cent year-on-year.
"In a Budget that aspired to boost private consumption and create jobs to improve the economy in the backdrop of the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, a variety of measures have been announced... The provision of Rs 48,000 crore under Prime Minister Awas Yojana for completion of 80 lakh houses will help the government in achieving its target of Housing For All," said Dhruv Agarwala, Group CEO, Housing.com, Makaan.com and Proptiger.com.
The government's proposal to cut down the approval time related to land and construction will bring ease of doing business in the realty sector and would benefit from the announcements related to industrial and logistics and data centers, Agarwala added.
With a committee being formed for urban capacity building and planning, India's real estate development will no more be confined to few big metros, said Manoj Gaur, CMD, Gaurs Group, and Vice-President, North, CREDAI National.
However, the long-standing demand of industry status for the real estate sector remains unaddressed, Gaur said, adding that he hopes the Centre would look into it in the coming years.
The Centre's commitment to further develop urban infrastructure in a robust but sustainable fashion is a welcome step, said Ankit Kansal, Founder and MD, 360 Realtors.
Further, rationalisation of Customs duties for a host of steel products might be helpful in optimising input costs, Kansal said.
Nayan Raheja of Raheja Developers said the Budget announcements appeared to be a mixed bag from a real estate standpoint.
"The anticipated expansion of smaller cities and infrastructural improvements can be considered as favourable developments for the sector," Raheja said.
Granting of infrastructure status to data centres in lieu of impetus to data localisation and protect data sovereignty is a shot in the arm, said Niranjan Hiranandani, Co-founder and Managing Director of Hiranandani Group.
In the Budget, the Centre proposed to include data centres in the "harmonised list" of infrastructure.
"This will enable the data centres industry to avail long and cheap credit financing in order to foster competitiveness to become a global data centre hub," Hiranandani said.
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