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 After two decades in India, GM's sales are falling and it is still
losing money, some 38.5 billion rupees ($581 million) in the year to
March, a company filing with the corporate affairs ministry showed.
GM said in July it plans to invest $1 billion in India to make it a
global export hub and to launch new products, even as it cuts its
production capacity due to sluggish demand.
"In the next five years, I should definitely make it to a green
balance sheet," GM's India Managing Director, Arvind Saxena, said in
an interview on Wednesday.
GM also plans to increase the amount of local parts and engineering
in its cars to 70 percent in five years from much lower levels now,
Saxena said.
Passenger car sales in India rose 5 percent in the year to the end
of March, but global carmakers Renault <RENA.PA>, GM, Volkswagen <VOWG_p.DE>,
Skoda and Ford <F.N> all reported double-digit declines, industry
data showed.
Instead, rivals such as Maruti Suzuki India Ltd <MRTI.NS> and
Hyundai Motor Co <005380.KS> are benefiting from rising sales.
But India is still expected to be the world's third largest
passenger car market by 2020, so global carmakers are shifting their
strategies to boost sales and cut costs.
GM has been on a cost-cutting drive for months. The company has
moved its corporate headquarters in India to a different location in
the same city, which saves it 50 percent in rent payments, adding up
to annual savings of $500,000, Saxena said.
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The company also plans to launch 10 new domestically-made vehicles
in India over the next five years in a push to double its market
share by 2020 from 1.8 percent in 2014.
"We need to have a more sustainable and committed business. It would
take time and would be a combination of all the activities that we
do," he said, adding that until domestic sales revive it will focus
on exports.
The company started exporting to Mexico from India this year, in
addition to Chile, which will help push total annual exports for
2015 to 20,000 and it expects to double this to more than 40,000 at
the end of 2016.
In future, it could also look at exporting to parts of north and
South Africa and some Asian countries.
(Editing by Sunil Nair and David Clarke)
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