Saturday, January 17, 2015

FULL MELTDOWN MODE: Auto Production Plunges 72% in Venezuela

1/17/2015

CARACAS – Venezuela’s auto sector produced 19,759 vehicles last year, a sharp decline of 72.46 percent relative to 2013, the Cavenez industry association said on its Web site.

Cavenez, which represents Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, General Motors and three other automakers, said in a report published Thursday that output in 2013 totaled 71,753 vehicles.

General Motors, which produces 13 models in Brazil, assembled 5,711 vehicles last year, followed by Ford with 4,900 and MMC Automotriz – the local assembler of Mitsubishi – with 3,785, according to the association’s report.

Toyota (3,280) and Chrysler (1,510) were the two other automakers that assembled more than 1,000 vehicles at their plants in Venezuela.

Vehicle production declined in 11 of the 12 months of 2014, the lone exception being December when output surged by 165 percent to 4,747 units, compared to 1,787 in December 2013.

Automakers are still struggling in early 2015 to obtain the dollars they need to import parts into Venezuela, where strict exchange controls established in 2003 after a costly opposition-led general strike remain in place.

Those companies say the crisis affecting the industry, which has an installed annual capacity of 250,000 vehicles, is the worst in the South American country’s history.

Venezuela’s government has sat down on several occasions with auto-sector representatives to try to alleviate the crisis, but the results of those meetings have not been disclosed.

A sharp drop in global oil prices has battered Venezuela, which relies on crude sales for more than 90 percent of the hard currency it needs to import basic products.

The country has entered into a technical recession, according to the Central Bank, which said on Dec. 30 that the economy contracted by 4.8 percent, 4.9 percent and 2.3 percent in the first, second and third quarters of last year. 


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