Amid a Europe-wide decline in car sales, Italian automobilegiant Fiat said it does not intend to leave Italy or close any of its Italianplants.
"The car industry is on its knees here, but I will keepFiat in Italy - with earnings made abroad," Fiat chief executive SergioMarchionne told Italian daily La Repubblica.
Fiat is crucial to the growth of recession-mired Italy'sstagnant economy, he argued.
"I have never spoken of redundancies, I have notproposed closing plants and I never said I wanted to leave (Italy),"Marchionne said.
Car registrations in Italy plummeted 20 percent in Augustand fell 8.5 percent Europe-wide from a year earlier, according toBrussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers' Association.
Fiat's European sales fell 18 percent to 37,687 cars inAugust.
Marchionne also said the car market in Italy next year would"be very, very bad".
It was the biggest fall in European auto sales for sixmonths as the region's economic woes even hurt demand in Germany.
Marchionne said the economic crisis and the collapse of theEuropean auto market meant Fiat's investment plans have changed.
"Fiat has accumulated 700 million euros of losses inEurope while it is compensating for these with its success abroad, in the USand in emerging economies."
Fiat has been forced to bring production to a standstill infactories in Italy, where car sales have slumped to levels not seen for 40years.
Alarmed unions and politicians have levelled sharp criticismat Fiat and urged it to come clean since the company said last week a five-yearplan to invest some 20 billion euros in Italian plants by 2014 was no longerrealistic given the current economic crisis.
Italy's industry and labour ministers have said they want tomeet Marchionne for talks, although no date has been set.
The company has only earmarked a fraction of the fundsoutlined in its so-called Fabbrica Italia or "Italian Factory" plan,a situation Marchionne blamed on the economic downturn but also on left-wingworkers who opposed changes to work practices at Fiat.
"I was counting on a market that would hold up, and itcollapsed, and on a reform of the labour market, and I now have 70 casesagainst the company filed by (left-wing union) Fiom," he told LaRepubblica.
Workers at Fiat's Pomigliano plant near Naples demonstratedTuesday outside the town hall and threw eggs at the offices of the moderateUilm trade union in protest against a two-week shutdown starting Sep 24.
Referring to Fiat's Panda compact car, made at Pomiglianoand on which the company spent 800 million euros to develop, Marchionne said:"It isn't selling, because there is no market."