Centre asks RBI for providing further relief to realty sector

In a step to further give relief to the distressed real estate sector following the alternative investment fund of Rs 25,000, the Central government has announced to give additional measures to ease liquidity and crunch of the NBFCs.

As per the recent reports available, the government is planning to ease the burdening of a number of the NBFCs involved in the stress assets by introducing a new scheme. Under it, the government may create a stress asset fund to buy out the stressed financial assets.

The Prime Minister’s Office and the Finance Ministry has already proposed to the RBI about letting the bank decide on deciding whether to classify real estate companies as default or special mention accounts (SMA) or to go for one time recast of selective real estate companies loans.

Now it is on RBI whether to allow a one-time rollover for temporarily removing the NPA or SMA account tag to the realty loans. The RBI might allow it on the case to case basis for the projects that are on advanced stage but are halted due to cash crunch.

Post green signal by the RBI, the banks will be able to take commercial judgements only for sound projects. This would enable a one-time rollover for the real estate developers by not classifying them as NPA or SMA for loan repayments.

Not tagging them would help the NBFCs to approach financing agencies without any doubts about their profiles. If done properly, it would satisfy the long pending demand of the industry to meet the liquidity gap.

The government, including finance ministry along with the RBI, has taken several steps before restructuring the realty sector by its roots. The government is already tackling the severe economic crisis which is not only affecting the real estate but can be seen across the spectrum.

As per the recent data available, there are over 4.5 lakh units that are not completed with over 1,600 stalled realty projects. The government is also planning to bring up ‘Special Window’ for priority debt financing to complete the stalled affordable segment housing project.