General Motors Corp.'s (GM) bankruptcy filing and the slowdown in the global automobile market will delay its plan to buy auto parts worth about $1 billion a year from India by 2010, the president and managing director of its local unit said Tuesday.

GM sourced about $500 million of auto parts from India in 2008. The auto maker buys components such as casting and machining parts from Indian suppliers.

"The efforts will still continue but I am not sure of the actual timeframe because of the different ownerships of some of those parts of GM and also because of the overall decline in volumes," Karl Slym told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview.

"The volumes on an annual basis are going to be lower at least for a period of time while the economy recovers in the U.S.," he said.

-By Santanu Choudhury, Dow Jones Newswires: +91-11-4356-3305; santanu.choudhury@dowjones.com