Area Development
The Tata Group of India will relocate the manufacturing facility for its Tata Motors Nano car project to a site near Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat, according to Agence France-Presse. "Gujarat was able to define the land, secure possession of the land, the main thing, at an unbelievably fast rate," says Rajan Tata, the company's CEO. "In fact, if we could move the plant in a day, we could have actually started operating here, given the fact that everything was ready." Gujarat is one of the more industrialized states in India and has a more business-friendly local government that has promised Tata a stable investment climate. Last week, Tata announced that the company would abandon a nearly completed site in the state of West Bengal after weeks of violent protests from locals who believed that residents were forced to sell their land for the facility at unfairly low prices. The company says it will begin producing the Nano, billed as the world's least expensive car, in early 2009, slightly behind its original schedule of later this year.