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Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest car maker expects to complete the process of acquiring land in Gujarat in the next one month. An official of the company said that the company does not have plans to start with the construction immediately. R.C. Bhargava, the Maruti Suzuki India Chairman said the construction will not get started unless the company utilizes the capacity of its plant at Manesar.

Bhargava was speaking at a seminar at Indian School of Business at Hyderabad. He remarked “Land acquisition process is on and we hope it will be concluded in this month. I don’t think we will start work on it for some years from now at least two to three years. We should see the market situation…. We will need Gujarat plant when the Manesar plant capacity is fully utilized. So, that depends on how the market grows. So, I can’t give a date on this.”

The company has two plants at Manesar and Gurgaon. Both of them are located in Haryana and together these plants can produce more than 1 million vehicles per year. A senior government official indicated that the company wants to acquire about 1,000 acres of land in order to start its plant.

The board of Maruti Suzuki India has approval for the acquisition of land up to 1,500 acres in the Mehsana district of Gujarat. In the month of June, the auto major had expressed its plans to invest up to 18,000 crore in the state and that it looked forward to manufacture about 20 lakh units in a year in the state.

Bharagava said that “We have to see how the market goes. It takes three years to build a new plant. So, if I need to take production from Gujarat plant in 2016, then I will have to start work in 2013… Nobody can create capacity when market does not require. We create capacity to make and sell cars. So if there is no demand for cars I don’t have to create that capacity.”

He observed that the sales for this year have not been good for the company and may be even lesser than last year’s sales. Till November this year, the sales of the company were less than about 18 percent than the sales in the same month previous year. The experts of the company have also shrunk by about 24.4 percent.