Rick Wagoner, chief executive of General Motors, is scheduled to meet on Thursday with members of the auto industry task force created by President Obama.

DETROIT -- The automaker General Motors said Thursday that its cash reserves were down to $14 billion at the end of 2008, a year when the industry's worst sales slump in decades nearly forced the company into bankruptcy before the federal government gave it a lifeline, according to The New York Times.

G.M. lost $30.9 billion, or $53.32 a share, in 2008 and spent $19.2 billion of its cash reserves.

For the fourth quarter, it lost $9.6 billion, or $15.71 a share, as its global sales fell 26 percent. It spent $6.2 billion of its reserves -- $2 billion a month -- in the fourth quarter alone. The company has said in the past that it needed a minimum of $11 billion to $14 billion in reserves to finance operations, but the estimates were made before the recent drop in auto sales and cuts by G.M. in response.

In 2007, the company lost $43.3 billion, a record, mostly the result of a noncash accounting charge; it adjusted the figure higher by $4.6 billion on Thursday.