MADRAS, May 24.:The Hindustan Machine Tools Factory, Bangalore, is expected to reach the Rs. 250 crore turnover during the Sixth Plan period, when it would have introduced many new product lines.

The HMT has received permission from the Central Government to expand its watch production capacity from one to three million watches. HMT engineers are now in Switzerland attending an important fair, where machine tools for watch-making are being exhibited. A high-power delegation led by the Executive Director of the HMT Watch Factory is now in Geneva to negotiate suppliers’ credit. Mr. S. M. Patil, HMT Chairman, was recently in Geneva for preliminary discussions on credit negotiations.

Disclosing this here today, Mr. Patil told pressmen that the project report for the watch-making expansion would be submitted to the Government of India in two or three months.

He said the Union Government, as part of its Hill Area Development Programme, would help the Sikkim Government to set up a sub-assembly unit for HMT watches. Darjeeling was another centre selected by the Central Government. All the watches assembled at these sub-assembly centres would be marketed by the HMT.

The expansion programme would be confined largely to making watches with hand-winding arrangements. Mr. Patil said it was wrong to feel that automatic watches were a luxury, but pointed out that the HMT learnt a lot about watch-making technology only after it entered the field of making automatic watches.