Slowdown has hit the realty sector rather hard. Infrastructure projects too have slowed down somewhat. But Ajit Gulabchand, chairman and managing director of Hindustan Construction Co Ltd (HCC), is not worried. The company is going full throttle on its ambitious Lavasa lake city project and has also bid for the Worli-Haji Ali sealink project. In a chat with DNA Money's Ashish K Tiwari and G Seetharaman, Gulabchand elaborates on the reasons behind these moves. Excerpts…

On Friday, the government said GDP grew 5.3% last quarter. How did you react to this news?

In a major relief to prospective flat purchasers and the beleaguered property developers, the state government on Friday stayed its earlier decision to levy a flat rate of 1% registration fee on transaction of any property, irrespective of their market value.

The government took the decision in a cabinet meeting held late on Friday.

What this means is that the earlier rule of whereby the buyer had to pay 1% on the property value, upto a maximum of Rs30,000.

Under the new rules it had framed, it had done away with the Rs30,000 cap and had ruled that a purchaser of any property would have to pay 1% on the value.

Washington  - US mortgage giant Fannie Mae reported a 25.2- billion-dollar quarterly loss on Thursday and asked the government for cash to keep it afloat.

Fannie Mae asked for a 15.2-billion-dollar capital infusion from the US Treasury and said it could need more if the housing and credit markets continue to worsen.

It was the sixth-straight quarterly loss for the lender that was taken over by the government last year. Losses for the year came to 58.7 billion dollars.

Parsvnath Developers Ltd, the New Delhi-based developer, has postponed its luxury mall-cum-office complex in Connaught Place, the commercial hub of Delhi.

The two cranes stationed at DLF's construction site at Lower Parel, with the name DLF Laing O'Rourke written on them in big bold letters, have hardly moved in the last one month.

According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. the slump in the economy will drive new home construction to a nine-year low in 2009. This prediction comes in stark contrast to what the Crown Corporation was saying in November.

In defense, Bill Clark, senior economist with CMHC, said that it was not possible last quarter to predict the economic decline we are now witnessing its impact on the economy.

Three months back CMHC conjectured that there would be 177,975 new homes built this year. On Thursday the figure was attuned to 160,250 a_" a level not seen since