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NEW DELHI --

General Motors Corp. will sign an initial agreement Thursday to build an engineand transmission plant for passenger vehicles in India, a seniorexecutive at its local unit said.

The plant will be set up at Talegaon, near Pune city, in thewestern state of Maharashtra, he said.

"We will be signing a memorandum of understanding with theMaharashtra government," said Ankush Arora, vice president incharge of marketing, sales and service at General Motors India Pvt.Ltd.

Mr. Arora declined to give details about the investment in the newengine plant and its capacity.

The plant will be built at the same location where GM hasestablished its second car factory in India. That factory isscheduled to start operations next week.

The Detroit auto maker has invested more than 14 billion rupees($320 million) to construct the Talegaon car plant. It will have aninitial capacity of 140,000 vehicles a year, which will expand GMIndia's annual capacity to 225,000 vehicles.

GM, which began its operations in India in 1996, currently makessix cars and sport-utility vehicles of the Chevrolet range,including the Spark minicar and the Optra sedan, at a85,000-unit-a-year factory in the western state of Gujarat. It alsoimports and markets the Captiva sport-utility vehicle. The automaker also has a technical center, including a design studio, inIndia's technology hub of Bangalore.

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