Investment plans for Manesar plant by Oct: Maruti

The country's largest car maker, Maruti Suzuki, will finalise investment plans for a new plant at its Manesar facility at a board meet of the company in mid-October.

"At this point of time, there is no investment finalised... Unless the project plan and timing of shifting are fixed, nothing can be said now," Maruti Suzuki India chairman R C Bhargava told PTI.

He, however, said that "...we expect that everything will be finalised by the time the board will meet next month...The board meeting will be held around October 20."

Reports in international media said Japanese auto major Suzuki Motor Corp would invest around 20 billion yen (about Rs 1,050 crore or Rs 10.50 billion) in its Indian subsidiary Maruti Suzuki for setting up a new plant and to move production lines to Manesar from Gurgaon.

Last week, the company had said it would shift a part of its production from the Gurgaon Plant-I to a new facility at Manesar in a phased manner.

The company had recently said it would invest up to Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion) in building test tracks and an R&D centre in Rohtak, Haryana, over and above an earlier announced Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) investment till March, 2010.

MSI had said it would be scaling up its production to 10 lakh units annually by the end of this year from eight lakh units.