Production of vehicles in Ukraine increased by 56.7% to 893 in January this year, compared with January 2018, the CFTS portal reports, citing the Interfax Ukraine news agency.
However, this was due to assembly of Skoda cars at the Eurocar plant, which increased by 73% to 828, the Ukravtoprom association of automobile manufacturers announced.
At the same time, Eurocar increased production of cars 4.2-fold in January this year compared with December 2018.
According to the association, Eurocar is currently the only company in Ukraine where production of passenger cars is continuing.
Production of commercial vehicles fell more than six-fold. Only five were manufactured during in January (excluding data from the AvtoKrAZ plant, which stopped disclosing manufacturing data in August 2016), including four by the Cherkassy bus plant (compared with two in January 2018) and one by the Zaporizhia Automobile Plant (30).
Production of buses remained practically unchanged in January. Sixty buses were produced, compared with 59 a year earlier. The Cherkassy Bus plant (40 in January 2019 compared with 12 in January 2018) remained the leading manufacturer, followed by the Chernihiv Automobile Plant (14 buses in January 2019, compared with 20 in January 2018), the ZAZ automobile plant (three buses in January 2019, compared with seven in January 2018), and the Chasiv Yar bus plant (three buses in January 2019 compared with 17 in January 2018). The Bogdan Corporation did not produce a single bus in January 2019 (it produced three in January 2018).
Compared with December 2018, production of buses reduced by 21% in January 2018.
Ukrainian automobile manufacturers produced only 6,616 vehicles in 2018, which are 23% fewer than they manufactured the previous year. They operated at less than 1.5% capacity.
Assembly of passenger cars reduced by 22% to 5,660 (including the 5,659 assembled by Eurocar, a 7.9% reduction) and assembly of commercial vehicles by 73% (excluding data from AvtoKrAZ) to 132. Assembly of buses increased by 2.5% to 824.
As the CFTS portal reported, automobile manufacturing in Ukraine grew by 49% to 520 in November 2018, compared with November 2017. Ukrainian manufacturers produced 6,350 vehicles in the first 11 months of 2018, which is 17% fewer than they produced in the period of January-November 2017. The Zaporizhia automobile plant produced only one passenger car during that period.