Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, on Monday asked real estate developers to adopt environment-friendly construction techniques and suggested CREDAI to set up a team to study the adverse impact of construction activities on air quality of 20 major cities.

Piyush Goyal was addressing realtors’ apex body CREDAI’s 25th foundation day. He raised the issue of environment pollution and urged CREDAI to consider setting up a team to study ways to adopt better construction techniques in the metropolitan cities of India.

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Minister Goyal further suggested the industry body to take this up as a mission and report to the Government steps being taken in this direction.

“Adopting steel and precast fabrication will speed up construction benefitting the entire ecosystem. This can help in reducing AQI and pollution levels,” he said.

Minister Goyal also spoke about affordable rental housing and announced that the Government would be engaging in discussions with the industry body to find ways to provide affordable rental to the citizens, besides working on the rehabilitations programme for slum dwellers.

He asked developers to build affordable rental housing projects to prevent the proliferation of slums in urban centres.

Goyal said that affordable rental housing if made available would be able to stop the proliferation of slums in cities. He pointed out that aspects like parking lots and spaces for entertainment families should be looked into when planning layouts.

“We need to recycle construction waste so that we move towards a circular economy as to be a net zero nation we have to begin from net zero localities and societies,” he said.

Emphasising the difficulty citizens faced earlier in owning homes, the minister pointed out that a concerted effort has been undertaken in the last ten years to clean up processes, promote Ease of Doing Business and encourage businesses to expand.

He also encouraged the industry leaders and participants to look for real estate opportunities abroad.

“Expanding the real estate footprint outside India will add to India’s exports and infrastructure services.”

He also urged the industry to expand its sector and the 250+ associate industries to make real estate a $1 trillion contributor to the nation.