Beijing : General Motors Co. said slowing growth in China won't prompt the company, the largest overseas automaker in the nation, to revise its 2010 sales forecast.

GM sales in China will exceed 2 million vehicles this year, said Kevin Wale, president of the company's China operations, in Ningbo, China, reiterating an earlier projection. Carmakers will sell a combined 15.5 million vehicles in China in 2010, he said.

China's monthly car-sales growth slowed in April to the lowest level since March 2009 amid rising consumer and property prices. Sales of cars, sport-utility vehicles and multipurpose vehicles increased 33 per cent to 1.11 million from a year earlier, compared with a 63 per cent jump in March, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on May 10.

Slowing growth is "a natural part of the industry cycle," Wale said yesterday at a conference in Ningbo, a city in the eastern part of China. "People need to manage it so they don't end with excess inventory. The market is still very strong. Underlying demand is very strong."

China, which overtook the US as the world's biggest auto market last year, has become GM's largest market. The carmaker aims to sell 3 million vehicles a year in China by 2015. It plans to introduce 25 new or updated models in the country by the end of 2011.

In April, Detroit-based GM sold 213,115 vehicles in China. The company and its ventures sold 1.83 million vehicles in the country last year.

The Chinese car market is "stabilising, it's not continuing to grow at the rapid rate" of last year, Wale said. "It's going to be a good year for the industry, and a good year for General Motors" in China.

The US Treasury, 61 per cent owner of General Motors Co., is talking with several banks about advising the department on the company's return to public trading, said a person familiar with the matter.

IPO

Greenhill & Co., Lazard Ltd. and Perella Weinberg Partners are among banks interviewed by the US Treasury Department about an initial public offering of General Motors Co., said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. A decision may not be made until the third quarter, said the person.

Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre wants GM to return to the auto-lending business before holding an IPO in the fourth quarter, people familiar with that matter have said. A General Motors Co. spokeswoman, Renee Rashid-Merem, declined to comment on the Treasury's adviser decision.