INTERVIEW - GM sees China sales growth slowing in 2010

By Alison Leung

GUANGZHOU (Reuters) - General Motors expects its China sales growth to drop dramatically in 2010 as the carmaker nears the end of a year of government stimulus-fueled growth in the world's biggest car market, the head of the company's China operations said on Monday.

The company expects China sales to rise 50 percent in 2009 but only 10 to 15 percent in 2010, Kevin Wale, president of GM's China operations, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the Guangzhou Autoshow.

"We've been changing the full-year forecast every month," said Wale, referring to the automaker's 2009 forecast.

China's auto market has been a major bright spot this year thanks to a raft of government incentives, including aggressive cuts in sales taxes on small cars, which will expire by the end of the year.

General Motors' China vehicle sales in October more than doubled from a year earlier to 166,911. The Detroit carmaker and joint ventures sold a total of 1.5 million vehicles in China from January to November.

Separately, the company is considering whether to increase its investments in Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries and in India, said Wale.

"We are looking to increase our performance in ASEAN and India as they are big markets and we don't have a lot of share there yet," he said. "So that's a big focus for us."

Wale said last month the U.S. automaker aims to grow faster than the overall China market next year as he believed Beijing will come up with additional steps to support the industry.