The government’s move to promote affordable housing by setting up a special fund is welcome. It will boost buyers’ sentiments and help revive the real estate market. We expected the government to give industry status to real estate sector, though its efforts to support infrastructural development is laudable.

This is a Budget for ‘New India’; it is an aspirational Budget that will help stimulate the market. Excise duty on petroleum products has been readjusted, with some portion of it being converted to cess for road development. We have to spend a significant amount of money to expand our road, rail and other infrastructure

On February 1, Union Minister for Finance, Arun Jaitley laid out plans for the future of India’s economy in the Union Budget of 2018. The total capital outlay for infrastructure sector has been budgeted to increase by 20.8 per cent to Rs. 5.97 lakh crore in 2018-19.

“The increase in the outlay on rural infrastructure is one positive feature. However, there were more expectations in terms of encouragement or need for incentivising the house building activity. ‘Housing for All’ is already a focus area of the government. It has already done 5.1 million homes in rural India.

The budget reaffirms continued focus on Infrastructure and programmes such as Smart City mission, AMRUT, NMCG, the Regional Connectivity Scheme (UDAAN) etc. as can be seen by increased outlay by 20% from the previous year. The key takeaway form this budget is the thrust on social and rural infrastructure including health, education, housing, agri-value chain and penetration of digital infrastructure.

This year's budget has primarily focused on three key sectors namely agriculture, healthcare and infrastructure. The proposed plan of the government to provide 10 crore poor and under-privileged people with a medical treatment coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh is indeed a laudable step which will alleviate the problem of the poor to a very large extent as healthcare has always been a problem for most of the population.

“Defence: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s move to set up 2 defence production corridors is the right step to boost the `Make in India’ initiative aimed at self-sufficiency in ammunition procurement.

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban), initiated in 2015, has set year 2022 as deadline for affordable housing for all project. Accordingly, the government plans to build 3,07,831 houses in Vidharbha, with a major chunk of 1.21 lakh houses in Nagpur district alone.

The Indian HVAC market is worth around Rs 21,000 crore with products alone contributing Rs 15,000 crore, reckons Guru Raja Rao Gangaprasad, Vice President-Sales (Building Services), Grundfos Pumps India.