Daimler won't take stake in Indian partner Sutlej

MUMBAI/STUTTGART (Reuters) - Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE) denied on Monday a newspaper report that it will take a 26 percent stake in Indian bus venture partner Sutlej Motors.

"There is no stake in Sutlej", a spokeswoman for the German vehicle maker said, adding there were also no plans to buy a stake in the company.

India's Business Standard paper had earlier said in an unsourced report that Daimler would take the minority stake and that the German proposal had been cleared by India's Foreign Investment Promotion Board.

Daimler's bus joint venture with Sutlej plans to build luxury coaches from the first quarter of 2008 and to sell around 200 such buses over the next two or three years.

Daimler generated global sales of around 18,600 buses and chassis in the first half of 2007 for its Mercedes-Benz, Setra and Orion brands. And it has forecast strong growth in the fast-growing Indian and Chinese markets, which it sees buying around half of the 240,000 buses produced each year.

Daimler's market-leading trucks unit said last month it had formed a joint venture with India's Hero Group to make a range of commercial vehicles for the local market.

Daimler, which also makes premium Mercedes-Benz cars in India, is setting up a plant with a capacity to make 5,000 vehicles a year. It sold 2,491 units in India in 2007, up 18 percent from the previous year.

(Reporting by Rina Chandran and Hendrik Sackmann; Editing by Louise Ireland)