Maruti plans new plant in Gujarat

The country's largest passenger car maker, Maruti Suzuki (MSIL), says that along with its vendors, it could invest up to Rs18,000 crore in Gujarat as it looked to produce around 20 lakh units in the long run in the state.

The company's top executives, including chairman R C Bhargava and managing director Shinzo Nakanishi, met chief minister Narendra Modi today to explore the possibility of setting up a manufacturing base in the state.

MSI is looking to start car production in the state, in a phased manner. Bhargava said the first phase of production would be of capacity of 1 million cars, which would take approximately five years to install. He added at current cost, that would entail an investment of Rs6,000 crore.

In the second phase, he said if the market continued to grow and there would be scope for further expansion, MSI  would do another million cars with corresponding investments. He added, along with that, MSI would get all the vendors, suppliers to the state and their investments would also be of the order of about Rs6,000 odd crore.

Bhargava however clarified that the company had not finalised plans yet to set up its manufacturing base in the state. He added that MSI had come to explore the possibilities of setting up operations at a future date in Gujarat.

He added that the attitude of the chief minister and the state government had been positive and for that reason, Gujarat certainly was a strong probability for MSI's future selection for expansion.