The board of directors of the company also approved a Rs 300-crore capital expenditure plan for 1998-99 at a meeting held on Monday.

A high-level management team, including MUL managing director RSSLN Bhaskarudu, will visit Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC) next month to study details of the new project. The team will submit its report to the board within two months.

The board also adopted the accounts for the previous fiscal and declared a dividend of 30 per cent against 20 per cent paid in 1996-97.

Speaking after the board meeting, Bhaskarudu said "an engineering team is leaving for Japan at the end of this month and a top-level management team will gonext month to take a decision on the introduction of new models".

The new models will be mostly in existing segments, but Bhaskarudu declined to divulge details of the vehicles or the time-frame in which they would be introduced.

The board also passed a revenue expenditure plan for the production and sale of 3,45,000 vehicles. The capital expenditure also includes modernisation of the existing plant, which will be funded through internal accruals.

Though Bhaskarudu refused to state any time frame for the roll-out, he pointed out that the revenue budget cleared for the current fiscal is for producing 3.45 lakh vehicles was only for the existing models. This implies that the new models would be introduced only in the next fiscal.

The MUL board approved the appointment of K Kumar as director, in place of K Saito who resigned from the board.

The board also decided to hold the annual general meeting in the first week of September.

Besides new models, the board also discussed the flow of gear-boxtechnology to MUL.

Bhaskarudu said the investment plan for new models, gear-box, dye-shop, aluminium foundry were also discussed.

"The board has realised that introduction of new models is the top-most priority for the company right now,'' he added.

Insight -- 3rd plant to go on stream in February

Maruti's new models will be ready only in the next fiscal. This year it will produce 3.45 lakh vehicles. Sales last year was 326,840 vehicles, up 7.7 per cent. The capital expenditure budgeted (Rs 300 crore) will help ease capacity constraint. The capacity utilisation of existing plants is 142 per cent. Maruti's third plant costing Rs 1200 crore will increase capacity by 100,000, but it is slated to go on stream in February 1999. The flow of Suzuki's gear-box technology to Maruti is still under discussion.