DETROIT - General Motors' chief financial officer says the company will not need the $2 billion loan installment for March that it requested from the U.S. government in February.

CFO Ray Young said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press that GM told the Obama administration it won't need the money so soon because its cost cuts are starting to take hold.

GM borrowed $13.4 billion from the government earlier this year. Last month, it said it would need up to an additional $16.6 billion to keep operating, including $2 billion in March and $2.6 billion in April.

And here's a bit of good news out of Shanghai. Chinese auto sales surged 25 percent in February from a year earlier, as a tax cut for small cars and other measures helped revive the market, an industry group said Wednesday, according to AP.

February's sales totaled 827,600 units, up 12 percent from the 735,000 sold in January, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in a report posted on its Web site.

That's the second month in a row that Chinese vehicle sales beat U.S. sales, which totaled 688,909 cars and trucks in February. In January, Chinese monthly auto sales overtook those in the U.S. for the first time - largely because of a plunge in American car sales.

However, a slump in demand is crimping sales overseas: exports in January fell 33.5 percent from a year earlier, to $2.66 billion, the group said. And imports of vehicles also took a hit amid the deepening economic downturn, falling 20.3 percent from a year earlier in January to $1.73 billion, it said.