Realty sector continues to reel under recession


Bangalore: Even though domestic economy is showing sign of pickup, Indian realty stocks seem not to be out of the woods, as the Index plunged by eight percent last week. In the week ended January 22, 2010, the Index traded in the range of 4070.52 - 3756.16 points. As on January 25, 2010 the total market capitalization value of the Index on BSE is 120,348.11 crore. The sluggish sentiment was witnessed across the sector with realty major, Unitech fell by 12 percent to 83.50, Parsvanath Developers fell by over five and Indiabulls Real Estate lost by close to 10 percent. Apart from Realty, IT and FMCG also couldn't perform as per the expectation. India's second largest IT exporter by sales Infosys fell four percent. India's third largest software services exporter Wipro lost six percent and India's largest IT exporter by sales Tata Consultancy Services slipped six percent. IT stocks declined following Google's disappointing results and on fears the Obama administration's bank plan will crimp outsourcing demand. In an interview to Economic Times, Chairman of DLF, KP Singh said, "The Realty sector will witness consolidation and some players (fly-by-night-operators) may go down under as part of a normal business cycle. There is a need for massive reforms in the real estate sector and change the archaic law that prevents growth. Realty has so far been a laggard area. Reform will also prevent the mushrooming of entry of unauthorized and unscrupulous developers. Currently 60 percent of development in India is through unauthorized." Last year, Reserve Bank of India had relaxed the provisioning norms for the banks for the real estate sector, allowing them to restructure the real estate loan beyond one year. As a result, those entire loans which were restructured in 2009 are coming for payment later this year.