By DAVID SHEPARDSON

The Detroit News

AUTOMAKERS could get billions as soon as early next year to retool factories to build more fuel-efficient vehicles after the US House passed a Bill that included a low-cost federal loan programme and congressional leaders took steps to fast-track the money.

The US House approved the 25billion loan programme by a 370-58 vote as part of a stopgap spending Bill to keep the government running through to March 6. The Senate is expected to pass the Bill this week and President Bush is expected to sign it.

The final rules for the loan programme must be written by the Energy Department and the added provision requires the agency to issue those rules within 60 days of the Bill becoming law. It also gives the Energy Department 10 million to administer the programme, including hiring outside consultants to help meet the deadline. That could help automakers to get funding in early 2009.

Without the provision, said Democratic Party Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Energy Department had warned it would take up to a year to finalise the rules.

Energy Department spokesperson Healy Baumgardner said: “As with any deadline, we will do our best to meet it.”

The legislation comes after a more than two-year effort to help cash- strapped automakers and parts suppliers gain access to credit, and gives a big boost to automakers, which need billions of dollars to develop fuel- efficient vehicles and modernise the factories that will build them.

The 25bn loan programme was authorised in an energy Bill approved in December that also hiked fuel efficiency standards by 40 percent and was intended to help automakers meet the new mandates, but Congress never funded it.

Without the low-interest loans, Detroit’s Big Three face double-digit interest rates to borrow money conventionally.

The Democratic Party’s Senator Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, said a key turning point in the push for the loans came last Saturday, when the Bush administration asked Congress to approve a massive bailout of the banking industry.