Wage growth in Slovakia’s automotive industry will accelerate and surpass inflation due to a tightening labour market, the industry’s local trade association says.
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Production of Slovakia’s car industry, centred on assembly plants of Volkswagen , PSA Peugeot Citroen and Kia, has been rising steadily in the past few years, but the sector is now facing a deepening shortage of skilled workforce, Reuters reports.
“I expect wage growth to be stronger than to date, due to workforce deficits,” Jozef Uhrik, President of The Automotive Industry Association (ZAP) told Reuters. “The rise will not mirror inflation, it has to be stronger.”
Slovakia almost doubled car production in 2007 with record output making it the world’s number one automaker per capita, ZAP said.
“Car production in Slovakia reached a record 571,071 in 2007,” Jozef Uhrik said, adding that the average of 105.7 cars manufactured for every thousand inhabitants put it in first place worldwide for production per head.
The steep rise in production last year was largely due to the launch of production at Kia’s plant in the northern town of Zilina at the end of 2006 and rising output at Peugeot Citroen’s plant in the western town of Trnava.
The pace of the production rise is expected to slow in 2008 with the association giving a ‘conservative’ estimate of 640,000 cars rolling off production lines by the end of the year.
