Real-estate firms have welcomed the Goods and Services Tax Council's reforms, expecting better affordability for buyers, spurring demand. The council has reduced the rate on cement from 28 per cent to 18 per cent, while the rate on sand lime bricks or stone inlay work and granite blocks has been cut to 5 per cent from 12 per cent.
The key demand drivers -- such as low home loan rates and income tax sops, particularly for affordable housing -- that supported the recovery in H2 FY2021, remain in place and will spur recovery again, feel experts.
Durable goods companies and retailers say online sales won't compensate for the fall in offline sales.
Many developers are facing financial challenges after the IL&FS defaults, after which non-banking finance companies - the major financiers to real estate firms - slowed disbursals.
Modi's demonetisation move has hit the real estate market in Delhi and Mumbai
India's biggest firm, Reliance Industries, has decided to cut salaries by 10 per cent in its oil and refining divisions. Several smaller companies like Kajaria Ceramics have followed suit with cuts as high as 40 per cent for those earning more than Rs 50 lakh.
Several on-site labourers in the city want to take special trains being run to transport workers back home. The rising number of COVID-19 cases in the city has caused anxiety among them.
Chief executives in the real estate, consumer products, automobiles, construction, and textile sectors said they were all expecting workers to re-join in the next 45-60 days, which would help them ramp-up production from July.
Urban planners and real estate experts say bad town planning in Mumbai and rising deaths during the ongoing pandemic are a "sad reality". Dev Chatterjee and Raghavendra Kamath report.
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