Fiat India has reaffirmed its commitment to India saying that it will not close down its Kurla plant as part of its worldwide restructuring programme.“Fiat has a long history with the Indian consumer. Work has been proceeding as usual at our Kurla plant and we are on schedule for the launch of a new petrol variant of the Palio, which will be unveiled shortly,” said Alberto Montanari, the chairman and managing director of Fiat India. The company’s statement came after reports emanating from Turin said that India plant will be closed down to cut parent company’s huge losses.“Fiat Italy is continuing to provide us with the necessary support and the company has already decided to restructure its capital thereby nullifying the effect of accumulated losses in India. Our immediate focus will be on instilling confidence in our dealers, vendors and customers. Our future product launch is rolling out as scheduled and we will simultaneously focus on rationalising operations for better efficiencies. We have been working very hard to enhance our customer service and this effort will go a long way in achieving the company’s objectives,” the CMD, who just returned from Italy, said. “Fiat’s Indian plant plays an integral role in terms of supplying components to other Fiat facilities worldwide. Fiat India exports components to Italy, Morocco, South Africa and Poland,” he added. Fiat India has a large product portfolio spanning the B and C segments of the market. When the Palio was introduced in India (Sept. 2001), Fiat had already attained 75 per cent localisation for this product. It was on account of this high local content that the car was aggressively priced. Today, Fiat has achieved a level of 87 per cent localisation of the Palio and 80 per cent for the new Siena making it competitive in other neighbouring markets also.The company also announced its sales figures for the month of June 2003 at 1,131 units as compared to 1,204 cars sold in the the previous month. Of this, Palio accounted for 1,037 units and the remaining 94 were Siena, Adventure and Uno. “The fact that our sales figure for June 2003 have held steady in spite of various rumours that have been circulating in the market is a very positive signal. This is a clear indication of the popularity of the Palio and our customers faith in the product,” said Ananda Mohan Gupta, commercial director.
