Loans Expert

General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre is to announce Wednesday that the automaker will soon pay off $5.8 billion in loans from the U.S. and Canadian governments well ahead of a June 30 deadline, a move it has promised since last year.

Whitacre is to announce the payment at GM’s plant in Kansas City, Kan., and then fly to Washington to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Michigan’s congressional delegation, people familiar with the plans said Monday.

GM is to use the move to highlight its steps toward issuing shares to the public and helping the U.S. government get out of its 60.1% ownership stake in the automaker. GM officials have said the company could break even this year, thanks to massive cost cuts under bankruptcy. The automaker reported a $4.3-billion loss for the last half of 2009.

The automaker’s payments are to include $4.7 billion to the U.S. Treasury and $1.1 billion to the Canadian government; it had already paid $2.3 billion on both loans. The money comes from a $16.4-billion escrow fund set up by the two governments as part of GM’s bankruptcy that the automaker is required to pay back by June.

The U.S. government has put nearly $50 billion into saving GM from collapse, an amount Obama administration officials have said was unlikely to be returned entirely when GM begins to sell shares publicly. Based on analysts’ estimates, the government’s stake could approach the $30.1 billion spent by the Obama administration solely on GM’s bankruptcy.

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