Russian automaker intends to increase sales in Uzbekistan by 2.5 times

The Russian automaker UAZ intends to deliver 1,000 cars to Uzbekistan in 2018, which is almost 2.5 times more than in 2017.

The Ulyanovsk automobile plant delivered 5,101 cars abroad in 2017, which is 47 percent more than a year earlier. Most of the UAZ cars are sold in the CIS countries, the products are also in demand in some countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, north, south and central America. The company expects to increase sales in foreign markets this year.

However, UAZ is the only car brand from the top 15 of the Russian market, which showed a decline in sales in Russia in 1H2018. This brand has rolled from 12th position to 14th in the ranking of the most popular cars, skipping ahead of Mitsubishi and BMW.

Experts believe that the decline in sales of UAZ in the Russian market is due to the supply of obsolete models. "The comparison will be even sadder given that the SUV market in Russia is generally growing ahead of schedule – the sales growth in this segment has been 26 percent for five months of this year," an analyst of Finam JSC Alexey Korolev said. "If the company does not carry out a deep modernization of the model range, as AVTOVAZ did, UAZ sales will continue to decline. These obsolete models have a rather narrow segment of buyers - if the corporate segment is not taken into account, they are mostly middle-aged men. That is, the most dynamically growing groups of car owners – women and young people - are left outside the demand."

Ulyanovsk automobile plant delivered 300 new cars to the Republican Cash Collection Service of Uzbekistan’s Central Bank in November last year.

"The UAZ cars have established themselves as reliable and durable SUVs in our service. It is not accidental that the choice turned next to the products of UAZ, the reason is that, the Ulyanovsk automakers most quickly respond to the requests of the Republican Service and offer at a competitive price their vehicles designed for fulfillment of special tasks," the First Deputy Director General of the Republican Cash Collection Service of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan Azizkhon Hamidov said then.

Source: Trend