For the real estate sector, this budget has reaffirmed the government's commitment to "Housing for All by 2020", tax incentives for REITS and InvITS, focus on infrastructure and reduce black money by introducing the Benami Transaction Bill. The game changing announcement are the intent for the sovereign to participate in PPP project risk and NBFC with a capitalization of greater than 500 crores to be treated at par with banks under the SARFESI act. We expect that the overall positive economic cues like reduction in corporate tax, focus on infrastructure and industry, and encouraging more credit to India, will overall result in boost in the economy and will indirectly but positively impact the real estate sector.

Overall, it’s seems a sensible budget for real estate focused on core areas like Housing, REITs and approval process. Amidst much expectations and debates over how the NDA government at the centre will bring the ‘acche din’ to the recession-affected real estate sector the finance minister Arun Jaitley has brought few good announcement for real estate sector such as 6 crore housing units for rural and urban housing by 2022, rationalization of capital gain tax regime for REITs, Infrastructure initiatives and set up of an expert committee for legislation on making a pre-existing regulation to expedite approvals. The budget also allocated 150 crore to create world class IT hub to take advantage of our competitiveness. Besides these positives the budget also announces freight rate hike for cement, coal, iron and steel. Iron and Cement being the crucial element of construction will be more expensive now which will further add up the construction cost.

I would rate the budget a 7 and a half on a scale of 10! Though it is a fairly well balance budget, the market expectations were really sky rocketing before this day. So I would not be surprised to see a market correction of maybe 5-6%. It is not close to the ‘Visionary document’ that people have been talking about. Overall, I would still say it is well balanced one. The levy on corporate taxation, rationalization of wealth tax, incentives by more expenditure towards infrastructure are all positives. But no where close to what markets were expecting.For NBFC's the SARFAESI law is a huge positive, for some infrastructure companies, especially in roads, the EPC companies should do very well. But that is where I would stop. There were much more expectations on infrastructure spending and more than all of this, the expectation on announcements for Banks as banks are in massive need for recapitalization and the budget fell short on those expectations but maybe those may follow soon.

Mr. Arun Jaitley has presented a transformational vision for kick-starting the moribund investment cycle through large public investments in infrastructure sectors like roads, railways, irrigation etc. This is especially critical in view of massive indebtedness plaguing the private sector & large stressed assets in the banking sector making it difficult for them to revive the investment cycle. By announcing a bold roadmap of lowering the corporate tax rate to 25% over the next 4 years & hacking the labyrinthine thicket of exemptions, Mr. Jaitley has by one bold stroke simplified India’s complex tax structure and tried to bring it in line with the advanced economies. This would unleash the energies of India Inc and help generate large scale employment opportunities for India’s young demographics. By leveraging the JAM (Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhar & Mobile phones) Trinity the government has sounded a bugle against wasteful frittering away of subsidies & brought about a structural change in ensuring that subsidies reach only the intended beneficiaries. This would enhance the government’s firepower in further fuelling growth in infrastructure.

A good long term Budget...with a clear vision for next 5 years. On the positive side the corporate tax reduction, clarity on FDI +FII investment in Pvt banks, reduction of leakages & subsidies, hopefully Govt's view on gold will make it more productive. On the negative side the lack of proactive measures to give some visib ility on how growth will be revived, 3.9% fiscal deficit & No increase in plan expenditure (though centre's share has gone up), nothing given to common man.But wish was that budget had given more confidence on how growth will come back.