GM Thought Operating in India Was Tough. Getting Out Is Even Harder
The company’s planned sale of its operations to China’s Great Wall Motor is on hold, a warning sign for foreign investors.
A cyclist passes General Motors’ shuttered manufacturing plant in Talegaon, India.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg
Flanked by green hills flecked with yellow and orange wildflowers, General Motors Co.’s 300-acre plant in the town of Talegaon in western India stands largely idle, as it has for most of the past year. Only a moldy layoff notice pinned outside the mothballed factory hints at the difficulties GM now faces in disentangling itself from the country. Four years after ceasing sales in India and more than a year since its final car for export rolled off the production line, the carmaker remains mired in legal challenges from the labor union that represents more than 1,000 former workers that the company let go from the plant, effectively barring its exit.
GM’s sale of the factory complex to China’s Great Wall Motor Co. is also in limbo, despite a deal signed in January 2020. India has curbed new Chinese investment since April of that year, and a number of deadly clashes along the two nations’ disputed border in the weeks that followed have eroded relations further.