Context:

• India has moved up a place to 35th spot in JLL’s Global Real Estate Transparency Index 2018, registering maximum improvement in transparency over the last two years.
• Policy reforms, liberalisation of FDI into realty and retail, strengthening of public information and assigning industry status to affordable housing helped India surge ahead in the rankings.

More about the Index:

• India’s performance over last two cycles of JLL index indicates that it has moved up by five places since 2014. “India’s remarkable improvement in the transparency scores across all markets has led to increased volumes of international capital being deployed in the country.
• Policy reforms, liberalisation of FDI, digitisation of property records also influenced the rating.
• The use of technology will add more transparency to the sector, he added.
• Compared to similar market-sized countries, also part of the same ‘semi-transparent’ group, India’s improvement is unmatched by its peers. Among BRICS Countries, both China and South Africa remained at the same rank – 33 and 21, respectively — as in 2016 assessment, while Brazil slipped to 37 and Russia remained at 38
• “The country’s rankings is likely to improve further in GRETI 2020 mainly on the back of the comprehensive implementation of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act in all states of India, introduction of insurance policies for land title insurance, pseudo-ownership of properties weeded out through Benami Transactions Act and the sector aligning itself well with the Goods and Service Tax (GST) regime.
• India’s task is cut out for entering the transparent markets, defined by ranks up to 30 by executing the reforms well and fast by the time of our next assessment in year 2020.
• The index measures transparency by looking at factors, including data availability, its authenticity and accuracy, governance- of public agencies as well as stakeholders of the realty sector, transaction processes and associated costs along with the regulatory and legal environment.
• In semi-transparent market that India belongs to and in transparent market that India aspires for, countries of The Netherlands, Thailand, UAE, Serbia have better improvement in scores than India, while Slovakia, and Thailand have same improvement in score like India.
• India needs to back itself and continue its journey towards creating a transparent, accountable and respectable realty sector that the best talent aspires to make careers in, JLL added.

Source: Hindu business line