Infrastructure could hamper global goal: Maruti

Jagdish Khattar, managing director of Maruti Udyog (MUL), has cautioned that infrastucture constraints could prove to be a dampner for the Indian car industry's global aspirations while identifying hardening interest rates, enhanced competition and commmodity price volatility as risks facing the company.

"India  has the potential to manufacture compact car competitively for the rest of the world. However, infrastructure constraints could prove to be a bottleneck in the Indian car industry's global aspirations.

"The limited capacity of our ports and railways, for example, could constrain our capability to deliver factory- fresh cars intact in large numbers in the exports markets," Khattar said in the annual report for 2005-06 of MUL.

The report added: "MUL is exposed to a variety of risks because of the change in demand dynamics as a result of increase in commodity prices, crude oil prices, interest rate, currency exchange rate etc."

As part of efforts to mitigate the risks and ensure returns on its huge investments in India, the company was working on five new models for launch in the country, the report said.