Russia’s car industry posted its worst showing in 2022 since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with production slumping 67% as Western sanctions and an exodus of global carmakers compressed the market, data showed on Wednesday.
Factories located in Russia produced 450,000 passenger cars in 2022, according to the data from the Rosstat federal statistics service.
Prior to 2022, the worst year for Russia’s car production since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union had been 2009, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, when Russian factories produced almost 600,000 passenger cars, data from analytical agency ASM-Holding showed.
Russia’s automotive sector has struggled under the weight of sanctions imposed by Western countries after Moscow’s despatched tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine last February.
Meanwhile, global carmakers who had built factories in Russia in recent decades left the country in droves and terminated supplies in the process.
In the summer, production at Russian factories, which had stopped due to a shortage of imported components, began to gradually recover, mainly thanks to Russia’s largest carmaker Avtovaz.
Production in December fell by 68% year-on-year to 40,300 units.
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