Mumbai: The Maharashtra government plans to build at least one million affordable homes in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and another half a million across the state, Housing Minister Prakash Mehta said here on Thursday.
Additionally, the state plans to improve infrastructure in MMR and other cities with private partnership in order to fulfil Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Housing for All’ by 2022, he added.
Mehta was speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industries conference on ‘The Future of Investments in India’s Real Estate Sector’.
Speaking on the occasion, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority’s Additional Metropolitan Commissioner Pravin Darade said that the city’s infrastructure needs to keep pace with the real estate growth and demand since Mumbai has grown exponentially in the past decades.
“Projects like Metro Rail, Navi Mumbai International Airport, Mumbai Trans Harbour Link and others will make connectivity more effective and efficient from end-to-end,” Darade said.
Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation CEO Sanjay Sethi said that the government’s focus is on transforming the state into a preferred destination for businesses by improving the infrastructure and connectivity.
“We want to project Maharashtra as a gateway for industrial development in India and prepare a roadmap to making the state a trillion-dollar economy by 2025. Fast-growing cities will present a wider range of risk-and-return opportunities, so collaborating with government will become more important,” Sethi said.
Raheja Group President Neel Raheja, who is the Co-Chair of the CII National Committee on Real Estate and Housing, said the biggest achievement of the government was the implementation of the new Development Plan for Mumbai by the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation.
“This will help realise Modi’s vision of a connected and transformed India, where every Indian will have a roof over his head. The policy reforms in the sector have been a move in the right direction in boosting investor sentiment,” Raheja said.
State Bank of India MD (Retail and Digital Banking) P.K. Gupta said that the problems of financing housing projects in India are well known, and adequate funding for the realty sector has always posed a challenge.
“Another challenge is how to effectively market projects in the current environment while conducting business ethically. For the realty sector, understanding the present challenges and opportunities ahead is imperative for them to completely transform and move ahead,” Gupta said.
The conference was attended by over 200 delegates representing various stakeholders like real estate developers, banking and financial sector, architects and engineers.
IANS