GAZ, Russia’s second-largest car producer, is to cut 7,000 jobs at its Nizhny Novgorod factory this month because of plummeting car sales, according to the Interfax news agency.
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New car sales in Russia, at one point last year the fastest growing in Europe, have shrunk by half this year. GAZ chief executive Sergei Zanozin has previously said he expected worse to come, hinting that the company may be forced to shut several of its operations.
He added that stimulus measures taken by the government have so far yielded no results.
GAZ has been promised 4bn rubles ($129m) from a government fund for the hard-hit domestic auto industry. The Kremlin is also thought to be behind GAZ’s apparently successful bid in May for a plan to purchase Opel from General Motors in a consortium with Canadian auto parts maker Magna and Russian lender Sberbank.
