Realty News Roundup: The RBI Will Cut Repo Rate, Says Reuters Poll; Centre To Launch 300 Village Clusters

Realty News Roundup is PropGuide's selection of top stories from the real estate sector

Top News

The Union Minister For Rural Development Birender Singh announced in Bhopal that the Centre plans to launch 300 village clusters under its 'Rurban Mission'. The minister said that the population of these village clusters would range from 25,000 to 50,000 and that in hilly areas, it would be less. The government will invest Rs 50-55 crore in each cluster, and will develop them with planned layouts. Read more

The Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) proposes to ease external commercial borrowings. The Indian firms could borrow from pension funds, insurance funds, sovereign wealth funds and other long-term investors to raise funds. The RBI has also proposed lowering the cost of borrowing by 50 basis points (bps). Read more

In a Reuters Poll, 45 of the 51 economists polled said that the RBI may cut repo rate by 25 basis points (bps) in its September 29 monetary policy review.  Even though many policy makers and industry leaders have been advocating rate cuts, the RBI did not cut the repo rate in its August monetary policy review. Read more 

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) plans to monetise its 67 acre land parcel in Bengaluru to build a residential township. In the first phase, L&T intends to build 3,200 prime apartments. The engineering major owns 1,200 such land parcels across India. Read more

Off the front page

Real estate developer Lodha Group's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Anurag Singhvi and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) R Karthik resigned after a eight and ten year old stint, respectively. In their stint, the revenues of the Lodha Group rose 13 fold. Both of them, according to reports, plan to start a real estate company in Mumbai. Read more

Opinion

Read Nikita Peer's opinion piece in Tech In Asia about how technology start-ups in India are seeing great action in the recent past. She observes that while most real estate portals put agents out of business, Plabro, a networking app allows agents to find clients.