OREANDA-NEWS. AvtoVAZ plans to cut about 1.6 thousand employees, said the deputy head of the Ministry of Labor, Tatyana Blinova.

"There is an announced release by AvtoVAZ”, - she said. – Among 1,600 employees, announced for the release, 500 workers are those who have been declared for the release in the last year, but they were not laid off due to the fact that there was a certain amount of the production program, which allows the plant to delay their release”. About 400 workers, according to Mrs.Blinova are the people of retirement and pre-retirement age.

"Of course, we are working now with AvtoVAZ on the issue what will be an additional possible number of released workers in connection with the situation in the automotive industry ", - added Mrs.Blinova, who is cited by the agency "Tass”. According to her, on the basis of how much work was carried out to optimize in the company, we are not talking about the significant reductions. "They say that as much as possible, it is additionally about 2 thousand people, among which about half are ready to be re-distributed within the company”, - added the deputy head of the Ministry of Labor.

In 2015, AvtoVAZ plans to increase the production by almost 39% to 712,000 vehicles, reported earlier the President of plant, Bo Andersson. According to him, the company will increase the production in 2015 mainly due to the increase of the production of the new Renault Logan, Renault Sandero and Datsun. "A large increase in production will also occur due to the start of production of cars Lada Vesta in September of 2015, but the results we will see in 2016”, - said earlier the head of AvtoVAZ.