Mumbai and Pune city may not get the relief benefit for the construction projects.

The updated guidelines for ongoing construction projects provided by the Center on April 15 have come as a significant relief to the builders as workers stationed at such sites are now able to begin construction work. The updated guidelines, however, also confirmed that such work cannot be performed in places designated as COVID-19 hotspots.

Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Pune are both declared hotspots for coronavirus. These regions are also host to the largest construction projects.

Anuj Puri, ANAROCK Chairman said, “The fact that COVID-19 hotspots would not be able to conduct activity from April 20 is a dampener for markets such as MMR – a highly-impacted zone that currently has the highest under-construction residential stock of nearly 4.65 lakh units, according to ANAROCK data. This represents 30% of the total 15.62 lakh under-construction stock across the top seven cities.

Developer Niranjan Hiranandani, however, said there was no blanket restriction in the entire MMR region and in Pune. “There are areas inside these regions that have been identified as hotspots. Some of these hotspots have been named and consequently excluded from the list. Therefore, construction should begin in places inside MMR that are not hotspots,” he said. Hiranandani, who is National President of NAREDCO, a body representing builders, said he had 4,000 workers stationed owing to the lockdown on its projects. “There are several such project sites where construction can begin,” he said.

There are presently 4,155 projects in the MMR with 6.39 lakh flats under construction. “The unsold stock is around 2.93 lakh units. Builders are now under enormous debt as their cash flow has stopped and their loans could not be serviced,” said Pankaj Kapoor, Liases Foras, a real estate research company.