As the buzz around a crack in the M&M-Renault partnership grows stronger, Renault-Nissan top boss Carlos Ghosn says both partners are open to finding their individual interests in their ongoing partnership.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Carlos Ghosn, Chairman & CEO, Renault-Nissan, spoke about the relationship with Mahindra & Mahindra, gave the rationale for selecting Bajaj as a partner and Renault-Nissan's distribution network.

Below is a verbatim transcript of the interview. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: 2008 a horrible year to be an automaker or a banker but looking back, auto sales are much better than what people thought largely perhaps of government backed incentives, but now there is talk that the governments could roll back be it interest rates going higher or other incentives, so how is the outlook for auto demand looking?

A: 2010 is going to be relatively stable compared to 2009, its not going to be stable in every single country because some are going to go up and others are going to go down. But globally we are forecasting with a lot of facts and data behind it that 2010 is going to be at the same lower level than 2009 and if there is any pickup, we will not be able to see it globally before 2011.

Q: 2009 did it do better than you thought?

A: Our initial forecast for 2009 is that the global car market would be around 54 million cars. We are going to end up at about 60 million cars, the difference is coming from the fact that many countries during the year decided to put incentives for the consumers to buy cars.

Q: If those incentives get rolled back and some countries are talking about that will that affect the forecast?

A: The fact that we are foreseeing 2010 at the same level as 2009 its because we know that a lot of countries are going to stop the incentives for consumer and if not, then normally it would be higher.

Q: What are the most important incentives which have kept demand high?

A; The scrapping of incentives that has been enacted in many different ways and it has been absolutely significant to provide the oxygen the industry needed.
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