Piyush Goyal Urges Indian Real Estate To Adopt Digital Payments, Greener Construction Methods

Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal on Monday urged India's real estate players to adopt online modes of payments for salaries to their workers and adopt greener construction techniques to help cut pollution.

Speaking at the 25th Foundation Day of CREDAI or the Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India, Goyal said greater formalisation will help the industry grow faster.

"Labour in the sector should be given social security benefits of insurance (ESIC) and provident fund (EPFO). This will help in the number of employees getting reflected in annual reports and in national statistics," he said.

"Unless we see those numbers in formal government statistics, it will be difficult to convince anybody that you really are impacting so many families across India."

He added that members of CREDAI, which include some of India's largest builders such as the Jaypee Group, DLF Ltd., Eldeco, M3M, Omaxe and many more, should expedite the formalisation of its 14,000 members and ensure that salary is paid only through digital means and not through cash.

He also urged CREDAI to consider setting up a team to study ways to adopt better construction techniques in the metropolitan cities of India.

"Adopting steel and precast fabrication will speed up construction benefitting the entire ecosystem. This can help in reducing AQI and pollution levels," he said, adding that these are just voluntary measures being suggested. "It's easier when we have the stakeholders take it up as a mission and not the government mandating it."