French auto major Renault has put on hold indefinitely its plans to introduce its cars in the Indian market from the upcoming Chennai plant on account of global slowdown, which has affected the firm's worldwide operations.

"We have indefinitely put on hold our product plans...it is because of slowdown that has affected us globally," a senior Renault India official told PTI.

The company, which had already stopped hiring for production activities in its upcoming Chennai facility, is waiting for market conditions to improve.

When contacted, a Renault India spokesperson said, "The construction of the plant is going on, but we have frozen our product plans due to downturn in the global economy.

"However, we have left our product plan at such a stage that whenever we want to defreeze it, without loss of any time we can do (that) and ramp up the production."

While investment for construction of the plant was going on, it has been put on hold on product plans, he added.

Renault India had last year announced plans to invest Rs 4,500 crore (Rs 45 billion) over a period of seven years to produce 400,000 cars annually from the Chennai plant in alliance with Japanese firm Nissan.

The company had earlier planned to have four platforms to manufacture its vehicles and launch them by 2010, along with one or two imported models under completely built unit, the official said.

The other partner, Nissan had also announced that it was scaling back its investments at the Chennai plant and would be starting production only through a single assembly line, with 200,000 units capacity per annum, as against two lines planned earlier.

Nissan cars would come in the market as scheduled in 2010, said the official.

Text: PTI