The Government on Thursday relaxed FDI rules, gave incentive on home loans, offered tax sops on investment trusts and provided Rs 7,060 crore for the development of 100 smart cities.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget 2014-15 also increased the allocation of Rural Housing Fund, run by National Housing Bank (NHB), to Rs 8,000 crore in this fiscal. Another Rs 4,000 has been earmarked for NHB to increase the flow of cheaper credit for affordable housing for urban poor.
"Our Government is committed to endeavour to have housing for all by 2022. For this purpose, I intend to extend additional tax incentive on home loans to encourae people, especially the young, to own houses," Jaitley said.
Stating that housing continues to be an area of concern for middle-lower middle class due to high cost of financing, Jaitley said: "To reduce this burden, I propose to increase the deduction limit on account of interest on loan in respect of self occupied house property from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh".
To deal with the problem of migration of people from rural to urban cities, Jaitley proposed development of 100 'Smart Cities' as satellite towns of larger cities and by modernising the existing mid-sized cities. A sum of Rs 7,060 crore has been provided in this fiscal for this purpose.For encouraging development of Smart Cities, the finance minister has relaxed the FDI norms.