China's Great Wall Motor abandons $1 billion India plan, fires all employees; Here's why

New Delhi, July 4: Chinese automobile manufacturer Great Wall Motor (GWM) has abandoned its plan to invest in India and laid off all its Indian employees. According to reports, the move came as it failed to obtain regulatory approvals from the Indian govt.

 

 

Apart from this, the Chinese automaker has been planning to enter the Indian market since 2020 but has now become one of the biggest casualties of New Delhi's increased scrutiny of investments from Beijing.

A Great Wall statement said the company "would like to thank all the members of Indian team for their contribution", adding that it would continue to study the Indian market and look for opportunities in the future.

Great Wall's entry into Indian market was announced with great fanfare during the country's biennial auto show in January 2020. India was a key market for the Chinese SUV manufacturer's global expansion plans and the company had envisioned a plant that would be its biggest outside China.

Following this, Great Motor began hiring staff in India and New Delhi increased scrutiny of investments from countries with which it shares a land border. The tensions between India and China got more tense later that year when a brutal clash took place, which has since held up billions of dollars of capital inflow in the auto and technology sectors among others.

However, the company's research and development centre in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru is operating as normal, it told Reuters earlier on Friday.