SAN ANTONIO - General Motors Co. will pay back roughly $8 billion in debt to the United States and Canada before June and could go public in a way that would allow taxpayers to make a profit on the bailout, CEO Ed Whitacre said on Wednesday.

Those financial targets are more aggressive than the top U.S. automaker has previously announced and come as Whitacre pushes GM to move faster to jump-start sales and win back U.S. market share after three decades of steady decline, reported Reuters.

Whitacre, who was named CEO in December when former CEO Fritz Henderson resigned under board pressure, said the top job at the automaker was proving harder than he had expected because of the challenges of reforming a bureaucratic corporate culture.

Whitacre said in December that GM would pay back government loans extended to finance its restructuring in bankruptcy by June.

GM was given $50 billion of government financing to restructure in a bankruptcy steered by the U.S. Treasury, which remains a 61 percent owner of GM stock.

Whitacre said he believed the government would be able to sell all of its equity in GM for a profit, a milestone that most outside analysts have seen as out of reach.