Ford to stop car production in India
Overall, Ford's plans to halt production mean the destruction of 35,000 to 40,000 jobs in the automotive industry. The automotive industry accounts for 7 percent of India's gross domestic product, with about 35 million employees.
A union representative says colleagues had never imagined this. Ford claims to have made 1.8 billion euros in losses over the last decade. In 2015, production began in Sanand to supply the Indian and world markets from there. The state of Gujarat was traded as the Indian Detroit, whose decline it is now also said to share.
It is operating at only fractional capacity. Already, the withdrawal of General Motors in 2017 and Harley Davidson in 2020 also represented a setback for Modi's lofty plans to make India a world-class player in the automotive sector. The government plans to pay three billion euros in subsidies over the next five years to develop electric and hydrogen cars.
India has long been considered an Eldorado of automotive supermonopolies. Analysts estimate it would become the world's third-largest market by 2020, after China and the United States. It only made the number five spot. Crisis-ridden developments meant the market came in at no more than 3.5 million vehicles, instead of the 5 to 6 million hoped for between 2015 and 2018. The markets slumped. Growth in the 1st decade of the millennium was 18 percent; in the 2nd, the annual average dropped to 1.5 percent. In the intensified competition, Ford has fallen behind the Japanese and South Korean groups.
The development underscores the importance of the group-wide struggle of Ford workers and the worldwide militant automotive workers' coordination.
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