Tata Motors third Greenfield plant to come up

Kolkata, Mar 29: After Singur and Uttarakhand, Tata Motors is setting up its third Greenfield project in the country "soon", Tata Motors Limited (TML) Managing Director Ravi Kant announced here today.

Delivering the annual Jehangir Gandhi memoriual lecture in the city today, Mr Ravi Kant, however, did not disclose the exact location of the proposed plant and neither gave any other details of the third project saying it was too early to mention it.

Stating that the proposed new plant would be the 6th production unit of TML after Pune, Lucknow, Jamshedpur, Singur and Uttarakhand, its Managing Director said while the Uttarakhand plant would start its production for the TML small trucks before this year end, the construction work in the proposed small car plant Singur in West Bengal was going on as per schedule.

"We are confident of starting the production of the much talked about small car project at Singur by the mid next year and there was no question of deviating from that schedule," he said replying to a query.

Asked whether TML was still facing any problem to continue the construction work after nearly three month long political disturbances creating nationwide concern about its future, Mr Ravi Kant replied in the negative.

Stating that the Indian Auto industry, like its counterparts in other parts of the world, was enjoying a tremendous upsurge in demand following the unprecedented growth of economy, Mr Ravi Kant said as a result it was bound to have a long term impact on the employment generation potential.

Moreover,he said, none of these greenfields project should be considered as an one off unit, as each of them, when completed, would play a vital role in establishing an integrated auto cluster in the whole neighbourhood and aiming to bring a sea change in the local economy.

Referring to the hoards of attractive incentives schemes, reportedly offered to Tata Motors to attract them to the state, Mr Ravi Kant described it as an 'worldwide phenomenon adding there was "nothing new in it".

"We have sowed the first seed in Singur and hope that many more industries would follow us to bring about a useful change in the state as well as the national economy," he said replying to another query adding "this was our confirmed decision and we would stick to it by all means".

About some other activities of TML,he said the company had recently set a fully integrated Technical Institute in the U.K.for the promotion of technical educations under various fields.

UNI