SAIC aims for sales to climb 12%

SAIC Motor Corp is confident it will sell 4 million units this year, or an annual rise of 11.7 percent, despite market concerns the industry may drive into a glut following the expiry of incentives to boost car sales.

"We have no plans to change our target," Chen Hong, president of SAIC, said at a board meeting yesterday. "We were running at full capacity last year, and (production) capacity is forecast to remain stable this year."

The nation's biggest auto maker sold 3.58 million units in 2010.

The government's aggressive incentives to encourage buying of small cars propelled China's auto sales by an annual 32 percent last year to 18 million units.

But the expiry of these measures slowed the market this year as February sales rose 2.6 percent year on year to 967,200 units, the slowest pace in two years. The sales also fell from 36.7 percent in January.

SAIC, the Chinese partner of General Motors Corp and Volkswagen AG, sold 699,000 units in the first two months, up an annual 26 percent.