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The carmaker’s investments will amount to €120mn in 2019.
Auto sales in Turkey plunged 46% y/y to a little more than 239,000 units in the first eight months of the year. The passenger car market contracted 44% y/y to 193,000 units while light commercial vehicle sales dropped 52% y/y to 46,000 units.
● Others
Volkswagen has chosen Turkey as location for new plant. Erdogan has reportedly ordered senior officials in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to switch to Volkswagen’s Passat model, with the German automaker seemingly on the point of announcing Turkey as the location for a new billion- dollar factory.
Meanwhile, Automotive News Europe has reported that the Volkswagen Group will build the next-generation VW Passat and the Skoda Superb midsize model developed by Czech subsidiary Skoda Auto at the planned factory in Manisa, a western province of Turkey. It cited an internal document from the group.
Turkey’s Trade Register Gazette published a notice on October 2 that Volkswagen has officially registered a subsidiary in Manisa.
Major producers including Fiat, Renault, Ford, Hyundai and Toyota produced more than 1.3mn motor vehicles in Turkey last year.
The combined profits of the eight listed Turkish vehicle makers—namely Tofas, Ford Otosan, Turk Traktor, Anadolu Isuzu, Tumosan, Dogus Otomotiv, Karsan Otomotiv and Otokar—increased by 1.3% y/y to Turkish lira (TRY) 1.8bn in the first half of 2019.
Anadolu Isuzu, Tumosan and Dogus posted losses for January-June while the other five companies remained profitable.
Both Karsan (TRY 8.3mn) and Otokar (TRY 195mn) returned to profit after posting losses a year ago.
Dogus Otomotiv reported the largest first-half loss. It stood at TRY 44mn. The aggregated sales revenues of the automakers amounted to TRY36.2bn in
January-June, a 3.9% increase on an annual basis.
The share prices of the listed companies gained by around 12.6% in the first six months, well above the 5.7% increase seen on the main stock exchange index, the BIST-100, over the same period.
Otokar’s shares were up 32.7%, while shares in Ford Otosan and Dogus Otomotiv rose 31.5% and 25.8%, respectively.
Tofas and Anadolu Isuzu saw their share prices rise 24% and 15%.
9.2.3 Transport corporate news
● Turkish Airlines
87 TURKEY Country Report October 2019 www.intellinews.com