Besides, Godrej's plea to sell of its entire stake in a joint venture company to partner - Tech Pacific of Mauritius - and Motorola's proposal to acquire Grass Check Technologies were also approved by the board at its meeting today, FIPB sources said here.

These formed part of the 43 proposals recommended by the board today amounting to a total foreign direct investment inflow of Rs 425 crore. The Japanese auto major Honda had sought to invest Rs 183 crore to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary for producing its range of scooters and motorcycles in the 50cc-250cc range. The company would also be producing a range of four-stroke engines for bi-wheelers besides components. It also seeks to export the Honda brand of vehicles fromIndia. The company has projected to cloak an export turnover of $ 18 million in the first five years of operation.

This would mark Honda's re-entry into the Indian scooter market having severed ties with the Arun Firodia-run Kinetic Engineering Ltd. The final models, their positioning and pricing would be detailed later. ``The modalities are being finalised in Japan and in a few weeks, the final details would be available,'' company sources said.

The subsidiary, to be capitalised at $ 43 million, is set to start production of 4-stroke scooters at an initial pace of 100,000 units a year, by the second half of 2001 at a new plant to be built near Delhi.

Honda plans to raise the annual output to 200,000 units by 2004 and production of a 4-stroke motorcycle is also planned in the future. The company would employ 500 staff initially and plans to increase to 1,800 by 2004.

Honda, through this subsidiary, would focus on scooters for a period of five years and, thereafter, Hero Honda and the Honda subsidiaryshall expand the range to encompass all two and three-wheelers.