Infrastructure and real estate have a large part to play in India's growth
The new Indian budget has laid down plans to reach the $3 trillion mark by the end of this year, and the string of new government initiatives in the domain of real estate and infrastructure have a large part to play in this scenario. This is according to senior KPMG executives, who have been following the recent budget.
The latest budget is the first in under the latest NDA administration, and the first under the guise of new Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The plan was highly anticipated amongst taxpayers and businesses alike in India, although few drastic changes were expected from this particular iteration.
Big Four accounting and advisory firm KPMG has been closely tracking the progress of the latest budget. The firm conducted a survey amongst businesses and taxpayers last month, hoping to gauge the expectations and sentiment in the country as the new administration takes over.
The survey revealed broad optimism within the business environment, and awareness of major changes coming in the direct and indirect tax regimes, although these changes ere not anticipated from this particular budget. Now, as the budget rolls out, these expectations have been matched to some extent.
The budget reveals plans to drive India’s rapidly growing economy to the $3 trillion mark by the end of this year. Sitharaman illustrated the importance of various infrastructure and real estate schemes in driving this growth, including the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and the Jai Marg Vikas, among others.
“The budget has put in place the basic architecture for moving India closer towards our new goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25. The budget rightly focusses on augmentation of physical and social infrastructure, particularly transportation infrastructure, customer-centric universal travel, integrated water management for ensuring clean water availability to all by 2025, ‘One nation One grid’ for universal power availability and countrywide provision of internet infrastructure and measures to improve the ease of living,” explains Elias George, National Head of Infrastructure, Government & Healthcare for KPMG India.
“A number of measures have also been proposed to enhance private investment levels in the country for bridging our infrastructure deficit. Particularly welcome are the budget interventions aimed towards improving women’s welfare,” he added.