Lift maker Kone expects to outperform market in India

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Elevator maker Kone expects its sales to grow faster than its rivals in India, where the government is trying to attract foreign investment to help expand the country's cities, a senior executive said on Monday.

Kone, the world's second-biggest lift maker after Otis , did not give a specific sales forecast for India but said sales of lifts in the country were expected to grow by a high single-digit percentage this year.

"(Our) growth rate should go up in India... They've got a lot of backlog in infrastructure development. That is what has been holding the economy back," Noud Veeger, Kone executive vice president of Asia-Pacific and Middle East, told Reuters.

He said Kone was expanding its Indian plant in Chennai in readiness for increasing demand.

The Indian market generates less than 5 percent of Kone's total sales, compared to China's share of less than 30 percent. Kone is the market leader in both Asian countries.

($1 = 0.7345 Euros)

(Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl; editing by James Macharia)