Investors will rush to Gujarat from ‘investor unfriendly’ Mumbai:CREDAI


Ahmedabad, 22 October 2012

Raising alarm over Mumbai and Maharashtra becoming increasingly “investor unfriendly”, developers apex body CREDAI has said the Maharashtra government’s policies will end up being its gift to Gujarat’s upcoming Gift City.

According to a report published in the Economic Times from Mumbai today, following are the main points raised by CREDAI national president Lalit Kumar Jain, who is also a leading developer in Mumbai and Pune.

-Gone are the days when investors from within the State and outside would plan increased involvement here. Now for quite some time, investors are looking outside Maharashtra.

-Latest report ‘Top 10 Emerging Business Destinations in India’ by real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield puts Ahmedabad on top with a whopping 39% of investments(Rs 71,270 crore ) made across these cities. In the last two years the volume of investment by various companies in these 10 cities – Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Kochi, Indore, Nagpur, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam – had increased by over seven times according to a report.

-There’s every reason to believe that investors are shying away from Mumbai where real estate has become a costly affair thanks to the government’s unsupportive policies like premium on fungible FSI, restrictions on land use, increasing property tax and now the hike in land lease rates. Feedback with CREDAI from across the developer community is that things are not that good here in Mumbai. After a gap of over two years it is only now that the buildings plans are being approved selectively. Red-tapism is everywhere and despite even the government and officials admitting the need for a single window system of approvals, it is yet to be implemented.

-On the contrary, the approval system in Gujarat is very fast. So much so, unlike in Mumbai, developers in Gujarat do not have to run around for approvals. They CC (commencement certificates) hand delivered. The State has team of IAS officers manning call centres for the government and the CM monitors all.

-Gujarat is in an hour flight away from Mumbai that is bound to cause this capital flight.