AvtoVaz to produce 332,000 cars this year
MOSCOW. July 28 (Interfax) - OJSC Avtovaz plans to produce 332,000 cars this year, a source present a meeting of the automaker's suppliers on Tuesday told Interfax.
The source said that AvtoVaz's executive vice president Igor Komarov announced that the company's production plan for 2009 came to 332,000 vehicles. A total of 260,000 vehicles will be sold on the domestic market while 33,000 units are designated for export.
Between September and the end of the year, Avtovaz plans to produce 120,000 Lada cars, the source said quoting Komarov. This would include 31,312 units in September, 32,152 units in October, 29,211 units in November and 35,000 units in December.
In the first six to seven months 2009, the company plans to produce 210,000 cars.
Earlier AvtoVaz president Boris Alyoshin said that the company produced 801,600 Lada cars in 2008.
According to ACM-Holding, AvtoVaz produced 139,404 cars in the first half of 2009, down from 384,500 units in the same period of 2008.
In addition, Komarov said at a press conference following the meeting that AvtoVaz would designate a special group of component supplies. "The list of suppliers is quite large, counting in the hundreds," he said adding that AvtoVaz would go through the list to designate several dozen suppliers according to their importance and significance.
He said that at the meeting, in addition to the production plan for 2009, a series of agreements were reached, which will help suppliers operate normally following the break in August. "We should pay them the entire debt," Komarov said adding that the payment was progressing but with a "slight delay".
He also said that several key suppliers would receive support in areas such as the refinancing of their debt to banks and in loans, which were also discussed with bank representatives at the meeting.