| The decision to organize the assembly of German cars in the Moscow region will be made within a month In January of the coming year, an agreement will be signed on the assembly of cars from the German concern Volkswagen in the town of Stupino near Moscow. Deputy Head of the Ministry of Economic Development Andrei Sharonov said this while talking to reporters last Friday. He said: “There are only three large companies left that are not present on the Russian market. But they are already close to this (the start of car production in Russia. - Ed. ),” assured the deputy head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. “The closest (to making this decision) is Volkswagen, a little further is DaimlerChrysler, even further is Toyota "
Whether the agreements between the Russian authorities and the management of the German concern will move towards practical implementation will be known within a month. Officials have repeatedly been ahead of the curve, thus possibly trying to speed up the negotiation process with foreign automakers. Thus, while in Yaroslavl at the beginning of July, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, German Gref, said that “in the next two years, four large automakers from Germany and Japan plan to make large investments in the Russian auto industry.” The minister did not specify which ones, but assured that, according to his data, based on personal meetings with the heads of four automobile concerns over the past six months, “at least two companies will begin investing this year, and two more next year.” -three". Unfortunately, German Gref's predictions did not come true.
The decision to assemble cars in Russia was finally made only by the South Korean company SsangYong, which at the beginning of December signed a licensing agreement with Severstal-Auto to begin production of the Rexton SUV from the end of next year (see Vremya Novostei, December 7). However, it cannot be called an investor even with a stretch, since the Korean side, according to Severstal-Auto CEO Vadim Shvetsov, will provide “general consulting and engineering services”, and raising funds will fall entirely on the shoulders of Alexei Mordashov’s company.
At the same time, it is no secret that negotiations with Volkswagen (as well as with DaimlerChrysler, Toyota, Nissan, etc.) at the level of senior political leadership have been ongoing for several years without visible results. Back in June 2001, Vladimir Putin gave instructions to create a maximum favorable regime for Volkswagen’s project to create a plant in Russia. The impetus for this decision was the corresponding agreements with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is friendly to the Russian president. At that time, Volkswagen representatives were looking for an empty site for the construction of a new (and not reconstruction of the Russian) plant. A series of negotiations were held with the authorities of the Moscow, Ivanovo, Oryol, and Leningrad regions, as well as the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Volga Federal District, Sergei Kiriyenko.
Already in October 2001, German Gref said in one of his interviews that “the implementation of a new project (construction of an assembly plant in Russia - Ed. ) should begin in the early spring of next year.” At the same time, he suggested that the plant would be built either in the Moscow region or in the Leningrad region. And it will produce the Bora, Passat and Czech Skoda Fabia models. According to him, at the first stage it is planned to assemble about 20-25 thousand cars per year. Later, this figure can be raised to 50-80 thousand, although the theoretical capacity of the plant will be about 300 thousand cars a year.
Mr. Gref supported his assumptions by the fact that the project received the support of both the President of Russia and the Chancellor of Germany: “That is why I believe that the issue of investment in the new enterprise will be resolved positively,” he said.
In the spring of 2002, no statements were made on this topic, and in August of the same year, the head of the Russian representative office of Volkswagen, Torsten Bradler, disavowed Mr. Gref’s promises, calling assembly in Russia inappropriate due to the low purchasing power of Russian citizens. According to him, “for now, such a plant will not be successful, since a car with a price below 10 thousand dollars is in demand here. There is no such car in the Volkswagen range (at that time the cheapest of the Polo concern cars cost about 12 thousand dollars - - Ed. )".
However, this did not dampen the ardor of officials. Already in December 2002, the deputy head of the Ministry of Industry and Science (currently the Ministry of Industry and Energy) Sergei Mitin again made a statement at the XI International Automobile Conference that Volkswagen was going to build a plant in the Moscow region to produce cars and even components. He claimed that the corresponding letter had already been sent by the German concern to the Ministry of Industry and Science.
However, in the summer of 2003, Mr. Mitin said that negotiations on organizing the production of Volkswagen cars in Russia had temporarily faded into the background, and now the parties were already discussing the possibility of organizing engine production. And in July of this year, the Ministry of Industry and Energy started talking about Stupin again, saying that we are talking about the annual assembly of 50 thousand Bora sedans (from 19 thousand dollars). At the same time, in early August, the mayor of Tver Oleg Lebedev received a letter from Hans Jürgen Fipp, the mayor of the German sister city of Osnabrück, where it was reported that Volkswagen had drawn attention to the advantageous geographical location of Tver.
However, certain shifts in the negotiation process were evident back in February: the intention to build a plant in Russia was officially confirmed by the concern itself. In September, at a press conference in the United States, Volkswagen Chairman of the Board Bernd Pischetsrieder said that Volkswagen was considering the possibility of creating an assembly plant in Russia and plans to open it within the next 18 months. He said that there is no point in producing a cheap model in Russia that costs about 5 thousand euros, so it is planned to produce Volkswagen Touran compact vans, the cost of which is 20-25 thousand euros. This statement not only contradicts the point of view expressed earlier by Mr. Bradler, but also generally does not fit into the trends of the Russian market.
A Vremya Novostey source in the Russian representative office of the concern explained that “the choice most likely fell on the Touran, since the minivan segment is showing rapid growth in the West, but in relation to Russia, where SUVs are in greatest demand (Volkswagen Touareg sales grew by as much as 213% in the first half of the year ) is not justified yet.” However, according to the newspaper, at that time the management of the concern had not finally decided on either the model or other parameters of the project.
The reason for the intractability and slowness of the Germans most likely lies in the lack of a stable and predictable policy for investors in Russia. Experts are confident that all this time, Volkswagen’s final decision was hampered by uncertainty regarding the issue of exporting auto components for domestic assembly. The decree on reducing duties on components, which the government has been developing since 2002 and considers as an important incentive for foreign investment in the domestic auto industry, will come into force in the second quarter of next year (see Vremya Novostei, December 10). It is expected to start operating in the second quarter of next year. On Friday, Mr. Sharonov confirmed the government’s intention to “reduce duties on the import of components as much as possible (from 10-15 to 0-3% of customs value) and at the same time maintain the highest possible duties on foreign cars.” Yana GODOVANAYA |
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