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K. Giriprakash

Bangalore , April 19

GENERAL Motors (GM) has issued a fresh deadline to the Government on resolving the issue concerning the Daewoo plant even as it plans to launch a new car in the B-plus category sometime this year.

The company is also learnt to be considering a move to gradually reduce the production of some of the Corsa models.

It has scaled down the production of Corsa models to about 8,000 units this year from about 8,400 units in 2004. This has been done to increase production of the Tavera.

GM sources told Business Line that the company expects early resolution of the Daewoo plant imbroglio.

It is also set to increase the capacity of its plant at Halol by 20,000 units to 80,000 units soon.

A company official said that with the addition of one more shift, the capacity can be increased to 80,000 units and hence, this could be achieved in a short period of time.

This year could also see the launch of the Aveo, a mid-size car, though there has been no official confirmation from the company.

The five-door hatchback version is expected to compete with C class cars such as the Hyundai Getz, the Ford Fusion and the Suzuki Swift, which will be launched in May.

GM has maintained that unless the issue of unresolved debts of Daewoo Motors is sorted out, it would not be interested in going ahead with the takeover.

But the delay has pushed back certain big projects of General Motors.

It had earlier studied several options to launch a small car in India in case it is unable to acquire the Daewoo plant.

One of them was to use the Hindustan Motors facility to manufacture the small car, Chevy Spark, and the other was to import CKD kits from its South Korean plant.

But a few more weeks will give a clear indication of GM's new gameplan.

Though the company has been posting extremely good sales compared with its previous year's performance, its share in the entire passenger car market remains small.

With just two per cent marketshare, GM is keen on increasing the share of the high-volume small car market as soon as possible.

In March, the company reported its highest ever sales for a single month since launching its operations in 1994.

The company reported sales of 3,516 units largely because of high sales of the Tavera, which sold 1,905 units, followed by 1,101 Optras and 506 Corsas.

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