GE moves turbine jobs to Europe, China

A GE wind turbine (front) at a wind farm in Tehachapi, California, US. [Photo/Agencies]

General Electric Co said on Tuesday it will move 500 US power turbine manufacturing jobs to Europe and China because it can no longer access US Export-Import Bank financing after Congress allowed the agency's charter to lapse in June.

The largest US industrial conglomerate said France's COFACE export agency has agreed to support some of GE's global power project bids with a new line of credit in exchange for moving production of heavy-duty gas turbines to Belfort, France, along with 400 jobs.

US facilities in Greenville, South Carolina; Schenectady, New York; and Bangor, Maine, will lose out on those jobs if GE wins the power bids, a GE spokeswoman said.

GE also said 100 additional jobs involved in packaging aeroderivative gas turbines will move next year from outside of Houston to Hungary and China. No US facility will close, a GE spokeswoman said.

The company is bidding on $11 billion worth of international power projects that require export credit agency financing, including some in Indonesia.

It will soon announce agreements with other foreign export credit agencies to finance GE products, GE Vice-Chairman John Rice said.

"If the EXIM bank were open, it would be business as usual," Rice said in a telephone interview. "If you're an export credit agency outside the US, you are now in the process of rolling out the red carpet to US manufacturers. There are many other companies other than us that are impacted by this," Rice said.