Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi sure knows how to strike while the iron is hot.
Finding opportunity in the ongoing labour unrest at Maruti Suzuki‘s Manesar plant, Modi is all set to lure Suzuki Motor Corporation to shift their entire India operations to Gujarat promising that the automobile giant does not face any law and order problems like the one in Manesar, Haryana.
According to a report in the Economic Times, Modi will meet senior executives of Suzuki Motor Corp in Japan next week as part of his 5-day plan to woo business to invest in Gujarat. He aims to convince them to move out of Gurgaon completely and shift the Swift’s diesel engine production unit too.
Reuters
The move will not only help Modi showcase creation of around 7,000 new jobs in the coming elections, but will benefit Maruti too which is suffering a loss of Rs 60 crore per day on account of the strike at Manesar.
Maruti is in the final stages of talks with the state government to set up a manufacturing plant in Gujarat, similar to those in Gurgaon and Manesar, where it would produce about 250000 cars annually. In June, the Gujarat government had allocated around 700 acres for Maruti’s proposed plant near Mehsana. Maruti had said it will invest Rs 4,000 crore to set up the new manufacturing facility in Gujarat by 2015-16. But Modi wants the group to expand its operations as the Tata Nano project in Sanand was the biggest breakthrough for the state in the auto sector.
In October 2008, Modi convinced Tata Motors to shift a factory to build low-cost Nano to Sanand after a two-year-long agitation by farmers over land compensation halted production at the original Singur plant in West Bengal.
Even US-based Ford’s India subsidiary is likely to build its second manufacturing unit right next to Tata Motors’ Nano factory at Sanand.
