Ahmedabad: In the past five years, there has been a fall of 90 per cent in the production of Tata Nano cars, the chief minister informed the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha.
He was responding to questions seeking figures of Tata Nano car production posed by three MLAs. Vajesingbhai Panda of Dahod, Punja Vansh of Una and Babubhai Vaja of Mangrol sought to know the number of cars produced from the Tata stable in Sanand in the past five years.
The plant was inaugurated in 2011 by the then chief minister Narendra Modi in Sanand to manufacture the country’s most affordable car —Tata Nano — with a capacity to produce 1 lakh cars in a year with an investment of about Rs 2,000 crore. However, due to poor sales, the production has dipped drastically.
In 2017-18, only 1,920 cars were produced, Rupani told the assembly on the last day of the monsoon session.
Nano, an ambitious project by Tata that was first proposed at Singur in West Bengal had to be abandoned after massive opposition by the displaced farmers. Soon after, the then CM Modi welcomed the investor with open arms to set up the Nano plant at Sanand in 1,100 acres of land.
As per the response in the assembly, the manufacturer had planned to invest Rs 2,900 crore in the first phase with the production of 2.5 lakh to 3.5 lakh cars per year. In the second phase, with an additional investment of Rs 1,100 crore, the capacity would have gone up to 5 lakh cars a year.
The investment in the first phase till March 31, 2018, by Nano, was Rs 3,854.43 crore, as per the answer submitted by the state government. Manufacturing of Nano has dropped in the past five years.
From 21,155 cars in 2013-14 to 17,489 cars in 2014-15, production rose to 22,214 cars in 2015-16 to drastically fall to 8,305 in 2016-17 and fall again to 1,920 in 2017-18.
