GM to expand capacity 80 %; go on hiring spree

General Motors India, a unit of the US carmaker General Motors, said on Sunday it will hire about 1,000 people by 2012.

This is in line with its plans to expand the current production capacity by over 80 per cent to 4.1 lakh units per annum at its two facilities, General Motors India president and managing director Karl Slym told PTI.

The company has two production plants at Halol in Gujarat and Talegaon in Maharashtra, in which it plans to invest $500 million (Rs2,200 crore) by the end of next year to increase capacity.

Last month the auto maker had said it planned to double  the combined capacity of the two plants to 450,000 vehicles per year. This would involvee raising the cpacity at Halol  from 85,000 to 110,000 a year and more than doubling the Talegaon plant's capacity from 140,000 to 340,000.

The Wall Street Journal had quoted Slym as saying that after recovering from bankruptcy General Motors had been raising funds locally and funding expansion with internal accruals. Slym had said that GM india had tied up with a consortium of five Indian banks to raise loans to fund the expansion.

Apart from the banks, funding would also be provided by GM US and China's SAIC Motor Corp, with which GM has an equally owned joint venture in India.

This joint venture will make cars from their Shanghai General Motors Corp joint venture and mini commercial vehicles from their SAIC-GM Wuling Automobile Co. joint venture.

GM India is also expected to introduce a sport-utility vehicle from SAIC's portfolio.