Azernews.Az

By Fatma Babayeva

Kazakhstan, the country that is located in the heart of the Central Asia decreased the number of cars and trucks that it manufactures.

The root reason of this decline is related to the decrease in the demand for new cars in Kazakhstan in 2016, the Association of Kazakhstan Auto Business announced.

Kazakhstan reduced car manufacturing by 92.2 percent to 428 cars during the first quarter of 2016 as compared to the same period of 2015, said the Statistics Committee under the Ministry of National Economy.

Meanwhile, the number of manufactured truck declined by 14.2 percent to 247 trucks in the country during the same period.

AZIA AVTO, SaryarkaAvtoProm and Agromashholding are Kazakhstan’s large operating car plants.

These plants produce Kia, Chevrolet, Skoda, Hyundai, SsangYong, Peugeot and other automibile brands.

In total, Kazakhstan manufactured 12,450 cars and 1,660 trucks in 2015.

Official auto dealers in the country experienced 59 percent decrease (6,991 cars) in sales for the first two months of 2016 compared to the same period of 2015.

Overall, the purchasing power of the populations living in countries that are dependent on the revenues from hydrocarbon resources has decreased due to the low oil and gas prices in the market since 2014.

Furthermore, Kazakh cars were not able to make their way into the Russian market due to the fees imposed on car manufactures during their exportation to Russia.

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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

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