Industry leaders seek affordable housing, duty relief at pre-Budget meet

The housing and infrastructure sectors were represented by leaders such as Hiranandani Group, Afcons, L&T, and GMR Group

In the last pre-Budget meeting held by the finance ministry, housing, infrastructure and energy sectors presented their demands to the Centre on Monday. The housing and infra sectors were represented by leaders such as the Hiranandani group, Afcons, L&T, and the GMR group.

 

The industry leaders batted for focus on affordable housing in the upcoming Budget. The sector leaders also said that rental housing, which was given to industrial workers, should be expanded.

 

"Housing, especially townships, should be given infrastructure status. There should be incentive ??schemes for slums. We also batted for interest deduction for home loans to be increased from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh,” said Niranjan Hiranandani, managing director (MD), the Hiranandani group.

 

There was also an ask for investment in a third city around Navi Mumbai airport.

 

The energy sector asked for duty cuts over import of key equipment in power and renewable energy segment. Several key equipment, such as solar panels, face customs duty barrier. While this is a push for domestic equipment, in the short term, the duties should be lenient to avoid demand-supply gap, said an executive.

 

In terms of urban infrastructure, the industry sought a more holistic public private partnership (PPP) framework with regard to projects in large government schemes such as the Smart Cities Mission. "The industry sought more model concession agreements (MCAs) to streamline PPP in social infrastructure as well. There are around 8,000 projects in the mission, with many in PPP mode. We have around 14 MCAs right now, but more can be made for specific sectors as well," said a source present at the meeting.

 

An MCA is a PPP policy document, which is applied uniformly across projects in that sector.

 

"From cities' perspective, it's important to focus on affordable housing for employees working in the services sector, especially women. This would entail an approach different from the manufacturing sector. The suggestion is that social infrastructure, such as affordable rental housing for women workers, should be inculcated into the financial terms when land around transit hotspots such as metro stations is put up for commercial use," the person said, requesting anonymity.

 

The infra sector also sought provisions to make unified metropolitan transport authorities more agile and efficient. Currently, there are 15 states in India with such authorities.

 

The energy sector was represented by Sumant Sinha, chairman of the ReNew group; Pawan Kumar Aggarwal, chief executive officer (CEO) of Waaree Energy; and Sudhir Mehta, chairman of Pinnacle Industries & EKA.

 

The urban development sector was also part of the meeting. Jagan Shah, CEO, The Infravision Foundation; Meera Mehta, professor emeritus at CEPT University; Dr Kalpana Viswanath, co-founder and CEO of Safeti Pin; Rejeet Mathews, program director, World Resources Institute; and Nithya Ramesh, director, Jana Urban Space Foundation, were part of the consultation with the finance ministry.