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Daewoo India 00/01 car sales up 6.8 per cent

Daewoo Motors India Ltd, a subsidiary of South Korea's debt-laden Daewoo Motor, said on Monday it sold 42,960 cars in the year through March, up 6.8 per cent from the previous year.

One model -- the Matiz premium small car -- accounted for 41,461 of those sales. The mid-sized Cielo and Nexia models accounted for the rest, the company said in a statement.

Daewoo has grown into India's third-largest car company with a market share of nearly eight percent, behind market leader Maruti Udyog, a joint venture of Japan's Suzuki Motor, and the Indian unit of South Korea's Hyundai Motor.

Daewoo India has been pushing ahead in India, undeterred by its own losses and the woes of its debt-laden parent, which the South Korean government has been trying to sell for over a year.

Daewoo India Managing Director Young-Chang Kim told reporters last week that the company would push to reschedule repayments of its $198 million debt owed to Indian lenders as part of a restructuring programme.

He said the restructuring should help the company break into the black from its passenger car operations in 2002/03.

Daewoo India posted a loss of Rs 1.64 billion in the six months to September 2000, up from 354.9 million a year earlier. It lost Rs 1.16 billion in the year to March 2000.

The company's poorly performing engine and gear-box division accounts for three quarters of its loss.

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