Ford India will set up two plants at Sanand, in Gujarat, to make vehicles and engines at an investment of Rs 4,000 crore ($1 billion) and roll out products by 2014 from the integrated manufacturing facilities.

With this, the total investments made by Ford Motors in India since its Chennai foray in 1995 would double to $2 billion.

The new plant will be established on 460 acres at Sanand. While the vehicle assembly plant would have a capacity to manufacture 2.40 lakh vehicles per annum initially, the engine plant will manufacture 2.70 lakh power plants annually.

Construction of both the plants will begin later this year and the first vehicle and engine will come off the line in 2014.

However, the company refused to divulge details of the incentives and the package given by the Gujarat Government with which it signed an MoU, or “State support agreement”, in Gandhinagar earlier in the day.

“The Gujarat Government has a transparent policy of offering incentives and packages for such projects and we have adhered to this policy”, said Ford officials in reply to queries about the price of land the company would be paying to the State Government.

The MoU was signed by Mr Maheshwar Sahu, Principal Secretary (Industries), and Mr Michael Boneham, Ford India's President and Managing Director, in the presence of the Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, and Mr Joe Hinrichs, President, Ford Asia-Pacific and Africa.

New jobs

The plants would create 5,000 jobs, they told newspersons. The State Government has also prioritised land adjacent to the site for supplier operations.

Mr Hinrichs said the company selected Gujarat because of its pro-business environment, infrastructure, access to ports in north-western India and skilled workforce. “Most States we visited offered similar packages.”

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