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GM to invest $500 Million in India
By siliconindia
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Friday, 29 October 2010, 19:53 IST
Bangalore:Under its expansion Programme General Motors (GM) plans to invest $500 million in the next 12 months in India and source components for its global requirements worth $100 million each year from 2013.
GM also said that all the products from its joint venture with SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) will be manufactured in India and hence the cars will not carry the Chinese tag. "The product, engineering as well as manufacturing will be done in India. We are just going to use the architecture from SAIC," GM's president and managing director, Mr Karl Slym, told Business Line.
Mr Slym said that with SAIC's presence, General Motors will have more than one option to choose from while short-listing the design for their new models.
He said that the company's commercial vehicles, which will be a product of the joint venture, will be rolled out from the Halol plant and by 2012, the combined sales of all General Motors vehicles will touch 3 lakh units.
For 2010 calendar year, GM expects to sell over 1 lakh passenger cars.
Mr Slym who has completed three years in India as the head of operations here, said the company will invest over half a billion ($) on expanding its facilities here in the next 12 months.
He said the loan raised from a consortium of banks of worth $250 million two years ago was enough for the current expansion. "We will not require any more funds either from our parent or from JV partner for sometime at least," he said.
He said GM was on track of achieving $1 billion worth of components to be sourced from vendors in India by 2012. It will continue to source parts worth about $ 100 million each year from 2013 onwards. "We have already sourced about $550 worth of components during the last two years," he said. GM sources components including basic metal parts from about 250 vendors in India of which 72 supply to both Indian as well as GM plants abroad. For domestic operations, GM has sourced $356 million worth of components so far.
Mr Slym said the diesel version of the Beat car will be launched during the second quarter of next year and the 1.3-lt petrol version of Beat will be launched in November. He said there was a potential to launch a car with less than 1-lt engine in India. He said that by 2012-13, its tech centre in Bangalore, which has about 2,000 engineers, will be able to design a complete car for India.
The US-based car major also plans to showcase its electric car for India during the second quarter of next year.