South Korea’s Kia Motors Corp is expected to pick a site next month for its first factory in India, stepping up plans to start making cars in one of the world’s fast-growing auto markets, two people familiar with the matter said.
The move would enable Kia to leverage the existing supplier base of its affiliate, Hyundai Motor Co, India’s second-biggest automaker by sales.
The proposed factory would start production in 2019 and eventually have capacity to make 300,000 Kia vehicles per year, one of the people told reporters — a major bet for a firm that sold 3.05 million vehicles last year.
The South Korean pair, jointly the world’s No. 5 automaker, are chasing new business after missing annual targets last year for the first time since the 2008 global financial crisis.
Their combined sales fell 2 percent in first half of this year, hit by weakness in markets like China, Russia and Brazil.
India is likely to become the world’s third-largest car market by 2020, according to IHS Inc, up from fifth place now, with annual sales nearly doubling from 2.7 million last year to about 5 million vehicles.
The size of Kia’s investment has yet to be decided, one of the people said, declining to identify which models would be produced at the factory.
Three sites are under consideration for the plant, and Kia might announce the plan in September after deciding on a location next month, the second person said.
The states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat have all been wooing Kia, according to two other people with knowledge of the matter.
One of the two, an official with the Andhra Pradesh administration, said the state — which neighbors Tamil Nadu, home of Hyundai’s existing plants near Chennai — is the front-runner.
Kia on Thursday said in a statement to reporters that it was “continually evaluating potential locations for overseas manufacturing facilities, including India, to secure additional engines for future growth. However, as of now no concrete plans have been finalized.”
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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