Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman may declare a series of steps to boost the realty sector - which has been in the doldrums for almost a decade now - in her government's continued push to boost growth and employment generation, reports suggest.
Sitharaman said the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) were working to resolve the issues that this vital sector faced, according to PTI.
Spillover effect
Sitharaman made it clear that she was aware the realty sector had been left out of past booster measures, though the sector had a spillover effect on many others, especially the core sector.
There are many alternative funds which are now approaching us saying we would like to do something with you all so long as there is some supporting mechanism available for reviving the realty sector."
"The government is very keen and is working very clearly together with the RBI to see how best we can, where necessary, tweak the existing norms to help the people who are affected in the realty sector," the minister said at an event at the National Stock Exchange (NSE).
The government has rolled back many of the tax measures declared in the July budget after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government started the second stint. Sitharaman also drastically reduced the corporate tax to 22 per cent in one of the biggest tax giveaways to the tune of Rs 1.3 lakh crore, the report said.
The minister admitted that the measures announced so far have not helped to revive the sentiment in the real estate and said that since August, the government had been making various interventions to revive the market and consumer demand. Still, there is a lot of work to be done and "one particular sector which I have not touched, but which has a lot of positive impacts and also can affect the stock market, is the real estate sector," she said.
More policy support
In what is regarded as a hint about the kind of steps the government might take, Sitharaman said many funds were seeking more policy support for investing in the country. "There are many alternative funds which are now approaching us saying we would like to do something with you all so long as there is some supporting mechanism available for reviving the realty sector," she said.
The liquidity crunch that hit the economy after the demonetization in November 2016, followed by the introduction of installation of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in July 2017 hit the realty market hard. Industry observers say the sector is reeling under the serial blows and got mauled further by the banking and non-banking financial companies (NBFC) sectors.
