Investments made by the companies are far beyond the $50 million level prescribed in the memorandum of understanding signed by them with the DGFT office, Lakhanpal says and explains that they have also been "honestly" implementing the provisions of the MoU.

He said Hyundai, Ford and Daewoo have put in around Rs 3,000 crore each in their ventures, adding that the objective of the MoU to attract overseas investment in the passenger-car segment had, therefore, been more than achieved.

Also, Ford, Hyundai and Honda are progressing towards indigenisation, a key element of the policy, Lakhanpal stressed.

During consultations with US officials in Geneva last month, he said the former appeared to be convinced of the explanation given by him on the auto policy and he did not expect any new objections to be raised by it. Earlier, the US had expressed serious reservations about the policy. Similarly, the EU is also "reasonably" satisfied with the explanation given by the Indian side on the contours of the policy during bilateral talks in Geneva in December 1998. The EU had earlier filed a petition in the dispute settlement body of the WTO questioning the policy.

On the other hand, Japan has not filed any petition in the WTO on the policy. It had raised some issues concerning the policy and the Indian side gave its explanation, he said, and pointed out that the former had participated in the December 1998 talks with the EU on the subject as an observer.

Under the agreement with WTO, India is to lift the restrictions on imports of kits/components going into the manufacture of cars set up with foreign equity participation on March 31, 2002.

By that time, all the foreign companies which had set up car projects in India would become Indian companies enabling them to acquire state-of-the-art technology. "We would also have achieved exports which would be a big boon to the automobile industry".

Further, all these projects would have only Indian employees, barring three or four posts at the top slot, Lakhanpal said and pointed out that the question of ownership was not important; what was vital was the success of the policy.