Car production in Ukraine plunges by over 98% over decade

Ukraine's Ukrautoprom Association says the manufacture of motor vehicles in Ukraine has plunged by over 98% in the past 10 years.

"In March [2018], the Ukrainian plants manufactured 773 vehicles. Production facilities of the national car industry continue to function only at 2% of their capacity, while this output of motor vehicles is nearly 98.1% less than that in March a decade ago," Ukrautoprom said in a statement.

Read alsoUkraine sees 22% rise in sales of new commercial cars in Q1 2018The association notes that full-scale production of cars in Ukraine has been completely halted.

"It's not the first month when statistics of the national auto industry's passenger car segment have been forming only due to reports on semi knocked down [SKD] assembly. Last month, there were 683 cars assembled (all at Eurocar plant). Only due to the extremely low base of comparison, such a volume of SKD assembly formed a positive trend in the car making division compared to March last year (+21%) and in comparison with the previous month (+13%)," Ukrautoprom said.

At the same time, the output of commercial vehicles in Ukraine shrank by 36% in March 2018 year-over-year (y-o-y) and by 20% from February 2018, to 28 vehicles. As Ukrautoprom claims, truck manufacturer AutoKrAZ, for unexplained reasons, has not provided statistics on truck production since August 2016.

The production of buses in March 2018 fell to 62 vehicles, which was 24% down y-o-y and 23% lower than in February 2018.