M.S Mani, Partner, Deloitte India

“Real estate sector needed rate reductions to prop up sales and the reductions announced today, for normal housing, and specially for affordable housing could lead to an uptick in demand “

“With these reductions, the GST rate on normal under construction apartments would be a little lower than that prior to introduction of GST and that affordable housing would be significantly lower than before “

“The combination of the increase in the threshold in order to be termed as affordable housing together with the lower rate of 1% could lead to significant upswing in demand “

“The lower rates would lead to a revival of the demand for under construction apartments, which had tapered down as buyers were preferring ready apartments which did not attract any GST ” having certain categories which are not eligible for input tax credits is an aberration of the basic principles of a good GST, in addition to leading to issues of traceability of transactions and making the transactions opaque “

“The transition provisions affecting under construction apartments where some payments have already been made, need to be seen to ensure that the benefits are passed on to buyers who have already booked apartments “