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Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram on Sunday urged Finance Secretary T V Somanathan to "re-examine his theory" that a housing loan is not a saving. Somanathan, in an interview to The Hindu while talking about the old tax regime, said that if one looks at the structure of the tax deductions, half of them are for savings and half of them are for dis-savings like housing loan or interest on housing loan. "The Finance Secretary asks 'Is the housing loan a saving?' His answer is 'No'. I wonder how many people will agree with the Finance Secretary," Chidambaram said on Twitter. The payment of interest and the installments of the loan is indeed an expenditure, but it is expenditure which is converted into an asset, which is a saving, the former finance minister argued. "Suppose you spend the same money on a holiday or at a race course: there will be no asset at the end," he said. "The Finance Secretary should re-examine his theory that a Housing Loan is not
High interest rates does not impact the demand for housing as individual home buyers are aware that it may move up and down during the tenure of their loan, said a research report by Bank of Baroda. The borrowing rates are on the rise since May this year after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) effected first hike in the benchmark lending rate. The repo rate has increased by 140 basis points since May. The report on 'Housing loan scenario in India' said the housing segment has shown resilience post pandemic. The strong momentum in housing loans by both Public Sector Banks (PSBs) and other financial institutions also points to the same. The government and RBI measure to support this sector, along with lower prices and interest rates helped cushion the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on this sector. With normalisation of economic activity and a pickup in growth, demand for housing is poised to grow, suggesting more demand for housing loans, said the report authored by Aditi Gupta, ...