Economic Survey 2017-18: FDI and PE flow increases investment in Real Estate sector

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New Delhi: With the announcement of several growth oriented reforms like RERA and GST in the real estate sector, the realty market has now begun to show many signs of improvement.  According to the Economic Survey 2017-18, the sector has seen a total foreign direct investment (FDI) of $257 million in the first half of 2017, which is more than double the total FDI in 2016.

Apart from FDI flow, Private equity (PE) investments have also increased from $0.9 billion in 2013 to over $5.9 billion in 2016, recording more than six-fold jump during this period. With this, the realty sector is all set to move in a much positive direction in the year 2018.

A good news which the economic survey stated is that the real estate and construction sector will provide around 15 million jobs in next five years, which means about three million jobs annually.  While in 2013, the sector employed over 40 million workforces, it is slated to employ over 52 million workforces by 2017 and 67 million workforce by 2022. Focusing on Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act (RERA), and Goods and Service Tax (GST), the survey said that they have affected the realty market only for a shorter time as they helped in bringing down the unsold inventory levels from 888,373 units in April 2016 to about 807,903 units in October 2017.

With these policy initiatives, the real estate sector is expected to higher transparency, accountability and makes it a better organized and structured, thereby increasing the investment.