First, the government failed to touch upon some of the recommendations put forward by the real estate sector. For instance, says Rajesh Arora, CEO,Arora & Associates (a leading real estate consultancy), the import ofequipment required for construction purposes should have been eased. Thereason being, says Arora, the construction equipment usedfor construction has a very large scope of improvement.

He explains how the new material, equipment and technology will help. ``Theuse of new kind of material, machinery and techniques will reduce the costof construction and will also increase the speed of construction.'' Aroraadds, ``This would directly benefit the end user in terms of quality.'' Also,it will be beneficial to the developers in terms of lowering the interestburden of the projects. The increased pace of construction will cut down onthe gestation period of various projects, he says. So, according to Arora,consumers will get the right quality product only when we have thelatest technology and knowhow for the construction sector.

Second, says Arora, international construction companies should be allowedto enter the country as soon as possible. These companies, says Arora, arewaiting for the FDI bill to be passed. In other words, the FDI bill, oncepassed, will be the basis for these companies to enter India.

With the foreign companies coming in, competition in the real estate sectorwill hot up like anything, Arora says. That is when builders in India willlearn to give quality stuff to the consumers at a reasonable price. Look atwhat happened in the telecom and automobile sectors, for instance, saysArora.

There was once a time when MTNL and VSNL were the only buzzwords in thetelecom sector in the country. Then entered hordes of other players in thetelecom sector. Competition happened and things improved. All for thebenefit of the end-user. Not only did the service improve in terms ofefficiency, but even the cost had to be reduced.

It was the same story in the automobile sector as well. Once upon a time,just two or three brands monopolised the sector. Gradually, the marketopened up, making way for the global players. The price war that followed isa good example of how competition wakes everyone up. And in the end, there'sno place for the sleeping giants.

Arora feels that the real estate sector, too, will follow in the footstepsof the automobile and the telecom sectors in delivering quality products.It's just waiting for the green signal from the government side.

There have been other negatives too in the budget. One of these is theincrease of surcharge on the non-corporate assessees, who are mainly theinvestors in the real estate sector. As the end use of these investors is togive their property on rent, the step to increase the surcharge will have awidespread impact, he adds. Plus, the government has done very little toease the norms for loans required for carrying out construction ofcommercial activities.

But more than anything else, competition is what the real estate sector islooking forward to. In order to repeat the success stories showcased by theautomobile and telecom sectors.