Due to the ongoing economic slowdown, which has affected Renault’s worldwide operations, the company has decided to put on hold its plans to introduce cars in the Indian market from the upcoming Chennai plant.

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

Renault India had last year announced plans to invest Rs 4,500 crore over a period of seven years to produce 400,000 cars annually from the Chennai plant in alliance with Japanese carmaker 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 as completely built units (CBU).

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.