Finally, India’s biggest commercial land deal was done in Noida on Friday. So far Noida has not declared officially the name of the bid winner but sources said that the bid for commercial plot worth Rs 6,500 crore has been made.
Infrastructure plays key role in economic development of the country and, in India, it has being increasingly recognized that Infrastructure development is inevitable for a sustained high growth rate in GDP. It has been recognized that there is a significant deficit in the availability of physical infrastructure across different sectors in the country, hindering economic development.
As Central Business Districts (CBD) begin to gradually lose their sheen against alternative locations because of their inability to offer Grade A buildings at competitive rates, retrofitting emerges as a preferred option (as compared with redevelopment) for quality improvement to increase the attractiveness and economic life of existing old buildings.
Supertech will invest Rs 600 crore to develop a 255 metre tall residential tower in Noida. The company will offer a total of 1,326 housing units with prices of up to Rs 2.25 crore in the tower that it claims will be the tallest in North India. “The project, North Eye, will be the tallest in entire region with 60 floors and 255 metre height.
The budget speech indicated further progress on the Direct Tax Code (DTC) as well as the GST – both critical measures, which is a welcome move. Though, I feel that it would have been better for the industry if GST was also rolled out along with the DTC.
Maharashtra Chambers of Housing Industry (MCHI), most prominent body of the real estate developers today described the Union Budget presented by the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as “Budget with few positive steps focused on the common man who is interested in buying a house in rural and urban areas”.
The Budget is relying heavily on maintaining the trajectory of growth in the economy to provide solutions for inclusive growth that touch the ‘Aam Aadmi’ and parallelly stressing on governance aspects, which hopefully will be covered separately through concrete action plans to deal with the menace of unaccounted wealth. The trend for consolidation is expected to continue.
The budget of 2011-12 has certainly given due importance to the affordable sector. The current scheme of interest subvention on 1 percent on housing loans is now extended to Rs 15 lakhs where the cost should not exceed 25 lakh.
The unfulfilled demand of more than 24 million houses in the country needs large scale impetus to achieve desired results. Allowing deduction for investment into affordable housing is a welcome step and will surely boost morale of housing industry and will accelerate investments in affordable housing.
Affordable Housing development is expected to be encouraged with the announcement of a new Housing Mortgage Guarantee Fund which will cover the risk of Housing Finance Companies for lending to less advantaged sections of society.