CREDAI Conclave 2013’ has set an impetus for bringing in a positive change for the real estate sector, stated Anand Singhania (in pic), president, CREDAI Raipur.
The real estate’s biggest body CREDAI held its two-day CREDAI Conclave themed on ‘Housing the game changer leading to double–digit GDP growth’ in New Delhi which was attended by parliamentarians, social activists and top-notch real estate captains who came together at the biggest platform of Real Estate — CREDAI Conclave in the National Capital.
The Raipur Chapter of CREDAI looks forward in implementing the solutions suggested at ‘CREDAI Conclave 2013’ by industry experts. It was indeed a great platform to put forth a step in consolidating the real estate industry, Singhania said.
The main highlights at the conclave this year was the urgency in setting up of a Real Estate Regulator and applauding the contribution of the sector to India’s GDP, a CREDAI Press release issued here on Tuesday stated.
Affordable housing was a much discussed topic at the conclave. Developers at the conclave agreed that though in the last five years, there had been a lot of progress on the affordable housing front, a lot more needed to be done to give a boost to this segment of housing.
Vikram Jain, lead, low-income Housing Practice at Monitor Deloitte, a management consulting firm, said there is a huge demand for low income housing. “There is a demand for 15 million homes and the demand for these homes comes from buyers with an income of `10,000-25,000 per month,” he said.
The solution to the demand for affordable housing is to build homes with clear title, provide water and electricity, said Jain. “The idea is to build small flats of 229 sq ft flat in space, with no wastage of space, costing around `8 lakh,” he said.
lalit Kumar Jain, Chairman, CREDAI said that the real estate sector receives a step motherly treatment from the government. “The real estate sector’s contribution to GDP is 6.2 per cent and it employs over one crore people. Yet, you have ignored the sector,” Jain said.
He said that there is a lot of frustration among real estate developers over the treatment meted out to the sector. “The infrastructure sector gets 10 year moratorium but if we don’t pay our loan within 90 days, it goes into default. We try to do our work with transparency then why are we shunned by the Government,” he said.
BJP national president Rajnath Singh in his address asked real estate developers to send a list of its demands to the party, so that they can be included in the BJP’s lok Sabha election manifesto. “We will try and do our best for the sector,” he said. He said that the BJP believes housing sector, infrastructure sector and manufacturing sector should be given importance.
“Manufacturing sector growth should have been good. There is no dearth of demand in international market but we are not producing enough to export. The result is we are importing more and exporting less. This is the reason for increase in current account deficit, external debt and weakening rupee. We need a comprehensive thinking to solve this problem,” said Singh adding that the party has formed a team to prepare a vision document.
Singh recalled that when the NDA Government was in place, the Government had focused on infrastructure development and housing sector development. “We reduced interest rate on housing loan. We also focused on infrastructure development through national highway projects. Incidentally, I was the surface Transport Minister during the NDA regime,” he said.
He further added that the NDA Government had reduced housing loan interest, which led to capital formation, which in turn led to a boom in steel and cement industry. Singh cited statistics to show the difference in growth between the NDA and the UPA regimes.
According to data from National Sample Survey Organisation, between 2004-2010, there was employment generation to the tune of 27 lakh whereas between 1998-2004, employment generation was around `6.70 crore.
“We generated more employment because of our focus on infrastructure development and real estate,” he said.
It was not just the BJP, but Rajiv Shukla, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and planning, Secretary, All India Congress Committee, also asked real estate developers to send a detailed report on the problems ailing the sector.
Shukla asked CREDAI to create a delegation of developers and approach the planning commission. “We will take your problems to the concerned ministries. Don’t worry about the upcoming elections. The Government will work till the last day,” he said.
He said he was confident if that sector was helped, the country could again achieve GDP growth of 8-9 per cent. “We are facing crisis of current account deficit, which had gone up to tune of $80 billion, which has now come down,” said Shukla.
Shukla assured CREDAI that RBI is doing its best to fix current account deficit.” That can only be accomplished with the co-operation of real estate developers, since NRI’s are interested in buying property here,” he said.
Union Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Dr Giriji Vyas assured real estate developers that the real estate regulatory bill will be suitably modified if necessary.