Talking to newspersons here on Friday, Spender said that the rupee devaluation has not had a substantial impact on its production costs. Further, Ford India has been importing components from Europe and the rupee devaluation has not been very high against the pound. Spender also flagged off a Rs 18 lakh conservation and environmental grants programme in India.

The grant will be disbursed to individuals, environmental organisations and community groups actively involved in the area of environment conservation.An independent panel of judges will review the applications, select the projects for the grants and announce decision in November. The grant is open to five types of conservation initiatives that are actually running in the year 2000, including natural environment, heritage conservation, conservation engineering, environment education and child and youth projects.

The programme is a sequel to Henry Ford Conservation Awards, which have been running in Europe for the past 17 years. Spender said that Ford has already initiated several projects in the area of environment conservation, including supplying advanced testing kits to the Automotive Research Association of India to assist the government in emission testing.