OREANDA-NEWS  On 11 November was announced, that the Ukrainian automobile corporation (AVTO), intends to build up exports because of financial crisis and decreasing sales at the domestic market.

"In this situation, aggravated by Ukraine's admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the fallen volumes of SKD (car assembly) production, we have to re-orient to markets not exposed to serious slowdown, optimize basic automobile production," the press service cites UkrAvto vice president Oleh Papashev.

A spokesman from the press service said that at the moment they have begun supply of 14,000 vehicle sets for production of cars by CKD method (welding, varnishing, assembly) in Egypt.

"The corporation is studying variants of expanding deliveries of both cars and vehicle sets to a range of countries, including those where it already has subsidiaries," the statement reads.

According to the statement, the corporation plans to supply automobiles to Iran, Sudan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and a number of other countries though it has no plans to open representative offices in these countries.

"We are not planning to open representative offices now, especially amid crisis," the corporation press service employee specified.

Presently the company has representative offices in Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Syria.

UkrAvto intends to continue manufacturing Slavuta cars in 2009.

The Ukrainian automobile corporation ended 2007 with net profits of UAH 1,075,148.

UkrAvto controls the biggest producer of passenger cars Zaporizhia car-building plant (ZAZ) and the Warsaw automobile factory Fabryka samochodow osobowych (FSO).