GAZ Group Deliveries to Europe to Begin with Serbia / M. Stulov / Vedomosti

The first deliveries of GAZ Group to Europe will begin with Serbia, by the end of 2015 sales of LCV of the Gazelle Next family will begin in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia, the company reported. The cars will be sold by nine dealerships in four countries of GAZ distributor in the Balkans – Verano Motologistic. In the EU, import duties on LCV are 22%, in the Balkan countries – 15%, therefore it was decided to start exports to Europe from them, explains a representative of GAZ Group. According to him, deliveries to Serbia will begin in May or June 2015.

"In the long term, we set ourselves the goal of selling about 15,000 LCVs in Europe, primarily in the Balkan countries," said Oleg Deripaska, owner of the GAZ Group. "In order to enter the European market, last year GAZ received a certificate allowing it to sell Gazelle Next vehicles in all EU countries," the group's representative recalls. Supplies to Europe will initially come from Russia, and later, possibly, from Turkey, where the GAZ Group has an assembly site, he points out.

According to Deripaska, in 2015, the GAZ Group will export a total of about 25,000 vehicles of various types. For comparison: in 2014 – about 17,000 units, says a representative of the GAZ Group. It turns out that exports will grow by 47%. Currently, the main export markets of the GAZ Group are the CIS countries (more than half of deliveries), as well as Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, etc., lists the representative of the group. Exports allow developing new technologies, loading capacities, using the opportunities provided by devaluation, lists the representative.

Exports are more profitable than domestic sales, notes an employee of one of the automobile plants. For example, AvtoVAZ plans to double exports this year – to 100,000 units, AvtoVAZ President Bo Andersson said earlier. The government is ready to support exports. “The task has been set to sharply increase exports, and now officials are thinking about how to do this while observing WTO standards,” says an employee of one of the automobile plants. Among the options is assistance in reducing import duties through intergovernmental agreements, says Alexander Morozov, Director of the Department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Vadim Sorokin, President of the GAZ Group, also spoke about this problem at the Russian Automobile Forum: for example, in Egypt and Vietnam, import duties are 120 and 80%. In such cases, the GAZ Group wants to supply the local market not finished cars, but chassis for local assembly, said Sorokin.

GAZ Group to start exporting to Europe from Serbia