Indian real estate firms demanded more monetary measures by government to increase demand in reality sector. Developers urged government to restructure debt and cut in interest rates to push growth rate of home segment. A team of reality firms, headed by National Real Estate development Council (NAREDCO) President, Rohtas Goel met Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and apprised him about the demands of developers.

Copper prices fell to about four-year low in international market following fears of low demand in the wake of global financial crisis. According to recently released data by the World Bureau of Metal Statistics, copper prices declined more than 55 per cent in this year. Analysts at Barclays Capital said that adverse is yet to come and next few quarters would see huge decline in demand as compared to current demand level in the market.

The union government would consider the civil aviation ministry's proposal to defer new ground handling policy by six months. The policy is aimed to allow handling of passengers, ramp and aircraft by air port operators instead of private carriers. The air port operators are proposed to offer these services through a specialized agency. State-owned National Aviation Company Ltd (Nacil) and Singapore Airport Terminal Services (SATS) can be selected for such services at various Indian airports. The policy is scheduled to be effective from January.

RBI has assured business community that it would take all possible steps to maintain adequate money supply in the country's finance system. It urged banks to cut interest rates to ensure credit at cheap rates without compromising quality of credit. The bank said, in a recently released report, that financial health of country is sound due to active liquidity management by bank.

Following a year after a slump in prices of metals used in construction, State-owned Gujarat State Petroleum Corp. (GSPC) has raised the capacity of its planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal by 30% to 6.5 million tonnes (mt).

The GSPC is aiming to get the plant ready by 2013 at a cost of Rs3,000-3,500 crore. This has become possible as there had been sharp falls in prices of metals such as steel and nickel.

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 by computer giant, Microsoft would hit the market next year. The company released its detail on Tuesday. The product is aimed to implement ODF in Office besides XML support. It would remove complexity in formatting by redefining set margin and text formatting.

Microsoft doesn't have default ODF support in Office 2007 but it would support it in the forthcoming version.