Ed Whitacre, General Motors Chairman and CEO, announced Wednesday that the automaker has paid back $8.4 billion in government loans related to its historic restructuring.
The final payment of $5.8 billion to the U.S. Treasury and Canadian development interests has been made about five years ahead of schedule, and includes interest, Whitacre announced to a crowd in Kansas City.
“It’s great news from my perspective because if you think back only a year ago General Motors was shedding a lot of workers, their volumes were going down and there was a lot of despair in the auto industry as they (GM) headed towards bankruptcy,” Tracy Myers, owner of a North Carolina car dealership, said following the announcement. “The landscape of the company and our entire industry is so much different than it was a year ago and as a result consumer around the world should feel pretty good about buying GM products again.”
Whitacre’s message was delivered amid a ceremony held in Kansas, where a nearby GM plant and another in Detroit will share $257 million in investment related to the company’s popular Chevrolet Malibu sedan.
Of Whitacre’s message, Myers said two good things he takes away from it is that the money has been paid back and the automaker is announcing investment.
