Azernews.Az

By Kamila Aliyeva

Over 15,000 vehicles were produced in Kazakhstan in January-October 2017, the Kazakhstan’s Union of automotive industry enterprises KazAvtoProm reported.

“According to the results of 10 months of this year, as many as 15,014 vehicles (including passenger cars, trucks, buses, special vehicles and trailers) totaling 115.1 billion tenge were produced in Kazakhstan,” KazAvtoProm noted.

The volume of output in kind exceeded the last year indicator by 2.7 times, approaching the result achieved in the twelve months of 2015 (15 210 units).

In particular, the production of passenger cars increased by 3.3 times, reaching 12,986 units. Of these, 72.4 percent accounted for the share of AZIA AVTO JSC and 27.6 percent - for SaryarkaAvtoProm LLP.

The number of buses produced amounted to 545 units and exceeded the last year indicator by 3.3 times. The production of specialized vehicles amounted to 182 units, showing an increase of 1.7 times compared to the same period last year. The output of trucks was 1,117 units and almost reached the figures of the previous year (1,133 units), reducing the gap to 1.4 percent.

In the context of regions, East Kazakhstan region holds the largest share in the structure of auto equipment production (9,620 units, or 64.1 percent). It is followed by Kostanay (3,988 units, 26.6 percent), Akmola (617 units, 4.1 percent), Almaty (419 units, 2.8 percent) and Karaganda region (4 units, 0, 03 percent).

Lada (7,413 units), Hyundai (1,605 units), KIA (1,544 units), Chevrolet (1,168 units) and JAC (562 units) entered the top five most popular brands of passenger cars of Kazakhstan assembly in January-October 2017, according to KazAvtoProm.

The list of brands offered by domestic enterprises includes Ravon (500 units), SsangYong (251 units), Skoda (236 units), Peugeot (151 units) and Geely (27 units).

Sales rating of cars of local manufacture was headed by models of Lada brand - Lada 4x4 (3,332 units), Lada Granta (1,394 units) and Lada Largus (1,263 units). The list of popular models for Kazakhstanis was also supplemented by Hyundai Elantra (718 units), Lada Vesta (706 units), Hyundai Tucson (685 units), Ravon Nexia (447 units), Chevrolet Cruze (417 units), JAC S3 (409 units) and Lada XRAY (398 units).

In the first ten months of this year, Kazakh cars - 1,187 cars (7.9 percent of the industry sales) - were mainly sent to China, Russia, Belarus and Tajikistan for export. The bulk of overseas sales (83.2 percent or 988 units) fell on Lada cars supplied by AZIA AVTO plant to the market of China. Also, 129 units of Hyundai commercial vehicles, 66 JAC cars and 4 SsangYong cars were shipped abroad.

“The contribution of the industry's enterprises to the GDP structure of the republic for ten months amounted to 111.1 billion tenge, which far exceeds the similar figures of the pharmaceutical and light industry. Investments of enterprises of the automobile industry in fixed assets reached 3.6 billion,” KazAvtoProm said.

Car manufacturing is growing at an unprecedented rate in Kazakhstan and significant expansion is planned in coming years.

As of November 2015, the number of registered vehicles reached 5 million automobiles, a 63 percent growth from 2013 (a 10 percent compound annual growth rate). On average, there is a car in every second household in the country.

However, official car dealers reported a decrease in the amount of sales of new cars by 28.2 percent in first quarter of 2017 compared to the same period of 2016. As much as 29 percent of all cars sold in 1Q2017 were assembled in Kazakhstan.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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