SEZ concession sought for residential housing projects

Sunil Mantri, Chairman, Sunil Mantri group

The Government must continue the tax benefit under Section 80 IB to create huge housing stock, particularly in budget segment across the country.
This may help in the creation of approximately 10 million housing units in 5-7 years, which is almost 50 per cent of Government estimated housing shortage as on date.
Currently, a retail customer for a loan up to Rs 30 lakh is being treated as priority sector.
However, developers who are undertaking such projects are not treated as a priority segment; allowing this will help serve, particularly the low-income/middle-income group.
It will boost huge creation of the affordable housing if loans to these projects are considered as for priority sector.
SEZ creation has led to a lot of activity in the industrial and production centres.
In a similar way, if affordable housing for residential SEZ can be created in large projects of above 25 acres, it will reduce substantially the construction costs as well as help in creating satellite townships which will reduce the burden and pressure on the cities. The Government only needs to give the SEZ concession (which would be called residential SEZ) and would create a large number of the houses across the country. Source: Hindu BusinessLine