According to Pradeep Jain, president, CREDAI-NCR, the interim budget was not in line with industry expectations as it has not brought in any relief for the industries/real estate sector in order to bring economy back on the growth track. It is very disappointing that the interim budgets had no focus on improving the sentiments of the consumer and encourage the home buyers.

In order to revive the real estate sector the government should have shown concern and taken steps to improve the demand for the housing sector, he said. It was expected that through the interim budget the government would send a strong message to RBI to take necessary steps like reduction in the home mortgage interest rate to of six or 6.5 per cent. Also, to increase the bracket for priority lending for houses up to Rs 30 lakh instead of Rs 20 lakh coupled with reintroduction of Section 80(IB) and reductions in direct taxes.

"However, no such initiative was taken in the interim budget announced. Another thing that came as a disappointment was that government did not take necessary steps to do away with overall negative sentiment that prevails today. In the current economic environment, the government should have taken measures to ensure job security and to generate more employment opportunities. As this sense of job security would have induced some positive sentiments and motivated them to come forward and make their purchase. Thus by helping people, the government could have helped the real estate sector without any extra costs, Jain said in a statement.

Industry not happy: Other prominent industrialists also expressed disappointment. ''Anything which is new will come only when a new government comes. This is more like what I had expected - reappraisal of last five years of achievements. We have expected more. We have eventually got disappointed (due) to our own hype,'' Nandan Nilekani of Infosys Technologies Ltd said. Global uncertainty and the domestic freeze in policy is a ''bit irritating ... we have to navigate through this for four months '' he added.

''''I was not expecting much from this budget because it was a vote-on-account ... We are not going to see changes in taxes and interest rates in the next few months. India Inc is expecting interest rates to come down to single digits,'' JSW Managing D irector Sajjan Jindal said.

"We term the budget a disaster; instead of bringing cheers for (the) common man, they have rather exercised caution saying that the next government will have to live with a high fiscal deficit,'' Arun Kejriwal, director, Kejriwal Research and Investme nt Services, said.