General Motors Co will stop selling cars in India from the end of this year, drawing a line under two decades of battling in one of the world's most competitive markets where it has less than a one percent share of passenger car sales.

The decision was announced as part of a series of restructuring actions from the Detroit automaker on Thursday, and marks a significant blow to India's strategy of encouraging domestic manufacturing.

GM says it would no longer market its Chevrolet brand - its only brand of cars marketed in India - despite India's promise as a market set to overtake Japan as the world's third largest in the next decade. But it doesn't plan to leave India entirely.

It plans to keep operating its tech centre in Bengaluru and to refocus its India manufacturing operations by making one of its two assembly plants in India the one at Talegaon, about 100 km (62 miles) southeast of Mumbai into an export-only factory. It plans to sell the Halol plant in Gujarat to Chinese joint venture partner SAIC Motor Corp .

-- Reuters