Mumbai: Amidst mounting debt, which has reportedly crossed the Rs 25,600 crore threshold and falling sales, Macrotech Developers, formerly the Lodha Group, has given pink slips to around 400 employees.
However, a spokesperson for the largest realty player in the country attributed the lay-offs to performance reviews.
The retrenchments at the company promoted by Mumbai BJP chief Mangal Prabhat Lodha have come at a time when economic growth has dipped to a six-year low of 5 per cent.
The Lodha group company was downgraded with a negative outlook by two global ratings agencies last month, Moody's Investors and Service and Fitch Ratings, on concerns on liquidity and falling sales.
According to a recent ratings issued by India Ratings, a division of Fitch, the gross debt of Macrotech rose 13 percent to Rs 25,640 crores in FY19.
"The company, across its projects, gives direct and indirect em-ployment to nearly 50,000. These lay-offs are a part of our annual performance appraisals," a spokesperson told PTI.
The impacted jobs include mid-to-junior level employees of the company and also contractual resources, sources said. These mid-to-junior level employees and contract workers, including engineers, architects and salespeople, were working at various projects, said the source.
The president of Association of Property Professionals, a forum of brokers, said lay-offs have become common in the realty space. He added there was an expectation that after the elections, things would return to normalcy, but it hasn't happened yet.
Lodha has nearly 42 under-construction residential projects, including the World Towers and the Lodha Park, comprising several high rises in central Mumbai, as well as affordable housing project like the Palava City.
