By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JULY 19, 2015 : "THE Indian Government is fully committed and working in a direction to ensure that the new Real Estate (Development and Regulation) Bill protects the interests of the real estate industry and safeguards the interests of the house buyers as well", informed Mr Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA Ministry), while addressing the 11th CII Realty 2015, a flagship event on real estate organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), recently.

"We are in consultations with all key stakeholders like the developers, builders, retail buyers, the state governments, other related Ministries, and other parties as well to work out solution on a few regulations in the bill", he added.

"A Balanced bill that protects both the buyers and the sellers would certainly act as a game changer for the real estate industry which is presently passing through a tough phase because it would reinforce the confidence of various financial institutions, banks and foreign investors in Indian realty sector. This would help solve the big fund crunch that the sector is facing. Further it is also expected to boost the retail demand if the consumer feels more secure of the timely possession and effective delivery of other services", opined Mr Mishra.

On speeding up the approvals process which is one of the biggest bottlenecks in the real estate sector, he shared that "We have convened a committee with key representatives of different related ministries like the environment, forests and Climate Change, finance, Defence, Urban Development, civil aviation, labour, power, cultural and consumer affairs etc to streamline the approval process".

"The members would meet regularly and next meeting is on 30th July to be chaired by Mr M Venkaiah Naidu, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) Minister. The minister would draw a roadmap with all ministries concerned to make concerted efforts to facilitate ease of doing business in Indian real estate sector by fast tracking of approval procedures especially for the affordable housing projects", he informed.

"We have requested different ministries and states to identify and clearly notify the areas where construction or development is permissible and where it is not and hence create land banks, so that the realtors are not harassed later on to get the approvals. It is estimated that simpler and uniform processes would lead to a 20-30 percent decrease in the cost per unit", he informed.

"We have requested the Ministry of finance and RBI on many occasions and finally it has agreed to the long pending demand of both the industry and the Ministry of HUPA to include affordable housing in the ‘Infrastructure’ sector category. Hence the affordable housing developers would be able to avail key financial incentives, regulatory and procedural benefits which are available to the infrastructure sector. But for now, the ministry is concentrated on the passage of the bill", he shared.

"It is also imperative that some regulatory permissions and procedural approvals are delegated to the state governments so as to simplify the procedures. We are also working with the states to come up with a model Affordable housing policy and would notify the same soon", he announced.

"Some of the projects under it would be on PPP mode where Govt would contribute Rs 1- 1.5 lacs . One of its key characteristic would be interest subvention scheme to the tune of 6.5 % for slum –redevelopment or renovation by the end user himself. To materialise this, we are meeting all major banks next week. With more than 700 million people expected to move to urban areas by 2050, there is an immense potential in the affordable housing sector for the industry", he added.

"We have decided to roll out a" Rental Housing Policy’ soon as well to safeguard the interests of both parties. Our draft Model Tenancy Bill, 2015, will soon go to the cabinet for its approval. It is on our website for feedback from all the stakeholders. The upcoming policy would do away with some archaic rules that governed this sector. The housing for all guidelines would also impact this upcoming policy", he shared.

He also called for rapid infra development in order to fill the shortage of 17 million dwelling units in urban area which gap is further expected to widen by 5 million units each year.