AvtoVAZ, GAZ Group and Sollers seek to hinder access to Russia for Daewoo Nexia and Daewoo Matiz cars.
AvtoVAZ President Igor Komarov, GAZ group Chairman Sergei Zanozin and Sollers General Director Vadim Shvetsov wrote to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with a request to restrict the import of cars produced by GM Uzbekistan, Interfax reports. An AvtoVAZ spokesperson confirmed this information to Vedomosti. A government official said that the cabinet had not yet received the letter and declined to comment on it. GAZ Group and Sollers also refused to comment.
Russian automakers complained to Putin about tough protectionist measures introduced by the Uzbek government against foreign automakers. In particular, Uzbekistan has fully stopped currency conversion for companies representing Russian auto plants, banned consumer loans for the purchase of foreign cars, and imposed an extra road tax on them, the letter says.
The Russian companies propose retaliatory measures, for example, to tie the conversion of currency paid for cars imported from Uzbekistan with the conversion of money paid for Russian cars exported to Uzbekistan and also impose an excise and an extra tax on Uzbek car imports.
GM Uzbekistan produces six car models, two of which - the Daewoo Matiz and Daewoo Nexia - are among the top 15 models in terms of sales in Russia. According to the Association of European Businesses (AEB,) 23,275 Daewoo Nexia and 19,886 Daewoo Matiz cars were sold in Russia in the first ten months of this year. In total, GM Uzbekistan produced 144,662 vehicles over this period (according to the Uzbek State Statistics Committee.) Daewoo directly competes with AvtoVAZ, says Vladimir Bespalov, an analyst at VTB Capital. The Daewoo Matiz costs 179,000-286,000 roubles, and Nexia - 229,000-325,000 roubles, whereas the fifth and seventh generation Ladas cost 161,436-171,668 roubles, Samara models are priced at 228,017-254,198 roubles, and Kalina at 254,350-361,047 roubles, according to the GM Uzbekistan and AvtoVAZ websites.
The letter was written to Putin at AvtoVAZ's initiative, says a source from one of the two other companies whose heads signed the appeal. However, it is not the competition with Matiz and Nexia that annoys AvtoVAZ the most, but the obstacles to business in Uzbekistan. An AvtoVAZ spokesperson refused to comment on the situation, but one of the company's employees confirmed that the problem does exist.
Sergei Lepnukhov, GM's press secretary for Russia and the CIS, said that his company did not like the idea of erecting trade barriers and narrowing consumer choice.
Last year, AvtoVAZ sold 8,920 vehicles in Uzbekistan (1.2% of all sales.) The company's spokesperson could not say definitely about this year's changes in sales. An employee of GM Uzbekistan's distributor in Russia claims that AvtoVAZ's share of the Uzbek market exceeds 10%. This is a low volume of sales and it would be strange to demand that the Russian government should introduce discriminatory measures against Uzbekistan in order to preserve this market, Vladimir Bespalov says. Most probably, AvtoVAZ just wants to get rid of a rival. However, the government has done so much in order to protect national automakers that it would hardly take any other measures along those lines, Bespalov says.
Alexei Nepomnyashchy