Hopeful that the age of slowdown will end soon for the real estate business, finance minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the Indian real estate sector cannot survive on subsidies.
Speaking at Credai Bankcon, a housing market conference, in Mumbai, Jaitley said, “The essence of your industry can’t be that I will only survive on subsidies. You will have to survive on the strength of the market economy itself and you will have to survive on the strength of our banking system to finance you.”
Jaitley suggested that representatives of the real estate sector should submit their taxation-related suggestions to the panel on tax issues and assured that the government would seriously consider the committee’s final recommendations.
He added that though the global economy is at a juncture when the growth rates are being brought down, India is unquestionably one of the fastest growing major economies of the world, if not the fastest. “On revenue collection, the indications look more on the optimistic side,” he said.
Jaitley said currently the banking sector itself is facing challenges, particularly the public banks. He said
improving the health of the power sector was one of the most important tasks and the government will soon look into this.
Speaking on interest rates, Jaitley said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has lowered rates on four occasions this year, which is a positive step for the real estate sector. “Interest rate hardening had impacted this sector adversely and it was a prerequisite that we kept inflation under control for a sustained period of time,” he said, adding, “Hopefully, this movement is here to stay and in the current global price structure, we are able to keep inflation under control.”
[“source -financialexpress”]
