"cheap indian cars coming",warns canadian minister!!

Nano, Tatas' small car with a price tag of just $2,500, is already being viewed as a threat to the North America auto market even before its launch in India.
With BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations set to overtake them in production this year, North American auto giants may soon face challenge from cheap cars from India and China.
Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prestice gave this warning Wednesday when he said that unless steps were taken to cuts costs and delays in cross-border movement of auto parts, North American-produced vehicles will be outpriced by Indian and Chinese vehicles in their own market very soon.
``Not long from now, we will see the first Chinese - or Indian - manufactured vehicles arrive on North American shores, ready to be sold to eager consumers. These vehicles will have encountered a border delay only once,'' Prentice told the Council of the Americas in Washington.
In the post 9/11 world, he said, despite the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) businesses in Canada, Mexico and the US were suffering because of ``the burden of new measures to enhance security, as well as more rigorous enforcement of existing rules.
``This means that businesses in all three countries are facing longer delays, higher inspection rates, additional fees, and more layers of security when they can afford it least.''
He said the costs and delays of an automobile part as it travels across national borders on its way to final assembly added several hundred dollars to the price of a North American-built vehicle.
Describing these problems as a `two-headed monster', the minister said, ``We want security and prosperity. Instead, we make it more difficult to have either. Not only do we hamper the legitimate trade and travel that provide the foundation for North America's prosperity, but we are also clearly misallocating resources.
"The dollars, hours and resources spent investigating legitimate travel and trade are dollars, hours and resources that would be better spent targeting the areas of highest risk.''
The unveiling of Nano a few months ago made headlines in Canada, with dealers and buyers expressing interest in the world's cheapest car.

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NANO to be launched in october!!!

The car being made at the Singur plant in West Bengal will be the first version of Nano. The Nano launch will likely coincide with Kolkata’s favourite festival, the Durga Puja.
Tata Motors is toiling hard to stick to the deadline in spite of various hurdles and cost over-run. It is estimated that the Tata Nano project cost has already zoomed up to Rs 2,200 crore so far as against the planned Rs 1,700 crore.
The company has preferred to downplay the political controversy over land acquisition that posed a hitch to the project, and instead blamed the floods that hit Singur in 2007 as the reason behind the cost escalation. “The Nano project is facing cost overrun, but the cars would be rolled out from the Singur plant during the Durga Puja in October barring any unforeseen circumstances,” Tata Motors managing director Ravi Kant told the media recently.
Tata Motors sees a substantial global demand for the Tata Nano with the company already receiving expressions of interest from a number of countries from Europe, Latin America, South East Asia and the USA for setting up plants. However, according to the company’s top brass, the Nano is scheduled only for the domestic market as of now and would explore countries in Africa and Latin America soon after the launch in India.
Meanwhile, the political controversy hovering around Singur seldom seemed to have died down. Tata Motors has made it clear that it wants to make peace with Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who was opposed to the project. Saying that the company was not averse to holding talks with anyone, Tata Motors managing director Ravi Kant said the company is in Singur to manufacture and not to be in politics.
He said: “We want to work with everybody. That is how we are growing our business, whether in Jamshedpur, Pune, Lucknow or Uttaranchal.”

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