Global car sales have bottomed -Nissan's Ghosn

The global car market has bottomed and is on track for 60 million units sales this year and next, Carlos Ghosn, who heads Japan's Nissan Motor Co and France's Renault SA, said on Sunday.

Ghosn also acknowledged that Renault's India partnership had not progressed as well as he would have liked, and said the partners were working to overcome the problems.

Ghosn said his global forecast for auto sales for this year was above his earlier expectation of 55 million unit sales.

"It looks like we are here hitting a plateau," he said at a World Economic Forum event in New Delhi.

"All plans of expansion and capacity can be resumed with a much more solid understanding of how this crisis will end up."

Global demand for cars skidded after the collapse last year of Lehman Brothers, with the drop most pronounced in the United States, which is on its way to being unseated by China as the world's biggest auto market this year.

Sales have been supported somewhat by government-backed incentives, but such stimulus steps have begun to expire in some countries, leaving the outlook for demand uncertain next year.

Global vehicle sales totalled roughly 70 million vehicles in each of the past two years.

Auto executives around the world have cautioned that sales could drop back to pre-stimulus levels without a convincing recovery in the global economy, although robust growth in emerging markets such as India and China are helping to absorb some of the pain.

"I don't believe in a double dip because we didn't come up," Ghosn said, referring to the prospect of a "double-dip" recession.

"The big question is when are we going to move up," he said. 

He said pockets of economic recovery are emerging.

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