Peugeot returns to India through CK Birla venture - Les Echos

PARIS (Reuters) - French carmaker PSA Group will announce a return to India this week through a manufacturing venture with New Delhi-based CK Birla Group, Les Echos reported on Monday.

The maker of Peugeot and Citroen cars, absent from the fast-growing Indian market since the late 1990s, has signed a joint venture deal with the family-owned conglomerate to include a Chennai assembly plant with current annual production capacity of 12,000 vehicles, the French daily newspaper said on its website.

A PSA spokesman declined to comment on the report.

Under Chief Executive Carlos Tavares, PSA is pursuing an ambitious recovery plan after a 2014 brush with bankruptcy and has pledged to find an Indian partner by 2018 to resume production in a market that registers about 3 million new vehicles a year.

(Reporting by Laurence Frost and Gilles Guillaume; Editing by David Goodman)