GM has announced it will begin repaying some $6.7 billion in US government loans ahead of schedule.
According to the Detroit News, GM will be making a $1 billion payment on December 31 and follow with another $1 billion payment each quarter until the middle of 2010. The loans are due by 2015.
GM will also begin repaying its $1.4 billion in loans from the Canadian goverment and from the government of the province of Ontario. The Detroit automaker will make payments totalling $200 million quarterly to both.
GM hopes to clear up about half of its debt before once again going public. GM, now majority owned by the US government, is planning a return to private ownership with an intitial public offering sometime after the middle of 2010.
But the figures do not provide as much good news for US taxpayers as it may seem. GM received almost $50 billion in bailout cash from the US Treasury, most of which the US government later swapped for its 60.8 percent stake in the new GM. According to the White House auto czar Steve Rattner, taxpayers will lose about $25 billion in the bailout.
The total amount of GM's losses since 2004? That would be 88 billion dollars.
