GM, due to unveil its first post-bankruptcy earnings report on Monday, will start repaying US$6.7bn of the US$49.9bn in aid it received from the US Treasury by the end of the year, five years sooner than required, according to media reports in Detroit at the weekend.
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GM will begin making US$1bn quarterly instalments on the loan on December 31 when it will also start to repay a US$1.4bn loan to Canada; this loan will be repaid at US$200m per quarter. The US$6.7bn Washington loan will be paid off by the second quarter of 2011 at that rate.
The repayments have been made possible by relatively buoyant sales in October; in the US sales rose for the first time since January 2008 and GM’s market share topped 20%. GM sales of cars and trucks rose 6.6 percent in October. In China, the company more than doubled sales from a year earlier last month.
Analysts also suggest that GM’s decision earlier this month not to sell its Opel/Vauxhall division is a sign that the company is performing better than expected.
