Whitacre: GM will pay back roughly $8 billion of government loans before June

General Motors Chairman and CEO Edward Whitacre said today that the company will pay back roughly $8 billion in debt to the United States and Canada before June, quicker than the Detroit automaker originally promised. In December, Whitacre said that GM would pay back its government loans by June.

“I believe we’re going to beat that date,” Whitacre said on today. “We have restructured and the progress that we’ve made, I believe, is sustainable. We’re not being crushed under a mountain of debt. We have a cost structure that works.”

Whitacre also said that there are positive signs that the automaker’s U.S. market share was holding steady after years of decline.

“We’re right at 20 percent, which is good,” he said. “We’d like that to increase over time. I can’t tell you a percent — as much as possible.”

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Reuters