Australia’s
Industry Minister Senator Nick Minchin is to meet Mitsubishi Motors Corporation
officials in Tokyo next month to discuss the future of the company’s troubled
Adelaide car factory.
According to the Age newspaper, Minchin is making the trip to clear up Australian
government confusion over the concessions Mitsubishi wants in return for guarantees
on the plant’s future.
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Mixed messages have been coming from Mitsubishi Australia’s managing director
Tom Phillips and the DaimlerChrysler-appointed Mitsubishi Motors Corporation
chief operating officer Rolf Ekrodt over the past couple of months.
The latest pronouncement from Japan says that Mitsubishi may not decide on
the South Australia plant’s future until August and that Australian taxpayers
will have to help with concessions on import tariff reductions.
The Age says that neither prime minister Howard’s federal government nor
the conservative Olsen government of South Australia could afford the inevitable
public backlash that would follow closure of the plant which was originally
built by Chrysler in the 1960s.
Yet
the federal government in Canberra is resisting one floated concession – another
freeze in the phasing down of car import tariffs from 15 to 10 percent, giving
local manufacturers more protection from foreign competition.
The Age said that the government does not want Senator Minchin’s trip to be
seen as a ‘mercy mission’ to save the Adelaide operation.
His office told the newspaper that the Tokyo visit had been tacked on to an
already-planned Korean trade mission and that detailed talks had been going
on for some months between the government and company officials.
It has been described as a "sounding out" exercise, giving Mitsubishi
management an opportunity to clarify their demands for financial help, the Age
said.
However, the senator will inevitably come under pressure to return with signs
of progress in what has been a protracted process to determine the future of
Australia’s struggling fourth biggest local car maker.
So far the plant’s future has not been guaranteed beyond the end of the
current Magna/Verada/Diamante model’s current production run, expected
in 2003.
Local Mitsubishi MD Phillips has taken the unusual step of revealing sketches
of a planned 2003 replacement model two years ahead of launch, claiming the
new car would have excellent local sales and export prospects if the South Australian
factory is given the chance to build it.
For their part, the Japanese management say they want more time to decide how
best to integrate Mitsubishi Australia into their global manufacturing network
which includes plants in the USA and Europe.
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