Akash Bansal, Senior Director, Strategic Consulting, JLL
New Delhi, Feb 9 (Mayank Nigam) “Land is the most important raw material for the real estate sector, but clarity in land titles is lacking across the country. If land titles are digitized then the relevant details would be available online which would facilitate faster and easier decision making in this sector” explained Akash Bansal, Senior Director, Strategic Consulting, JLL India. Bansal was speaking at the ASSOCHAM National Conference on Real Estate India ‘Ease of Doing Business and Affordability for Sustainable Growth’ on Wednesday.
He felt that digitization of land titles would provide pan India traction to the sector “there are many developers in the south, west who want to start projects in north India and similarly north Indian developers who want to work in the other parts of the nation but the huge challenge that they face is that clarity in land titles- land ownership and its legal status is lacking, digitization of these land records would expedite decision making and investment across the sector.” He observed that given India’s demography with majority of the population being in the working age, urban migration and increasing disposable incomes demand for real estate is rising at a fast pace but certain constraints remain in the supply side. He felt the major issue in the supply side which the developers face is raising finance; he made a strong pitch for granting industry status to Real Estate
“For any industry to grow it needs good financing, real estate sector does not enjoy industry status hence most of the public sector banks shy away from giving cheap loans. Industry status should be provided to this sector so that developers get money without much hassle at lower cost; this would bring the cost of construction down ultimately benefitting the consumers. Given that it is the Real estate is the sector which is giving the largest direct employment after agriculture, industry status should not be withheld from it” he explained. Granting industry status to Real Estate he said would not merely help the existing developers but also those developers who want to enter the market and he stressed that more developers are required as the demand is growing at a fast pace.