Interview with Bruno Ancelin, Senior Vice President, Renault S.A.

Mr. Ancelin, what do you think about Russian Renault sales?
While I cannot say what is Renault’s target for this year, we have a very good rule in the company in Russia during the last three years. We grew twice as fast as the overall market. It was the case in 2010, 2011 and 2012. In 2012 the Russian market increased by about 11 percent and we increased by 22 percent, so we had exactly double growth.

The Russian government plans to change rules regarding the payment of the scrappage fee, also known as the ELV (End of Life of Vehicle) tax. According to Andrey Belousov, the Russian Minister of Economic Development, Russian vehicle manufacturers, including foreign companies which are producing vehicles in Russia, are expected to pay the scrappage fee in the same way as importers. Until now they only had to provide guaranties regarding the scrapping of their cars. How do you see the idea? Is it already decided?
I don’t know whether it is decided or not, because we have had no official communication about that. We have just the opinion expressed by Mr. Belousov, which I think represents the opinion of the Russian government about the ELV tax. Our opinion is very clear. First of all we think that if nothing changes, it will be the best for us. Because we localize our final assembly, and adhere to Decree 166 we localise a lot of parts. Today we are highly localised, we are at 75 percent now for the Logan and the Sandero and we will come close to 70 percent for the Duster by the end of the year. We invested a lot in the modernisation of the Russian automotive industry so far and it is very clear that the preferred situation is that nothing changes.

Renault is considering the production of two light commercial vehicles – a smaller and a larger one – in Russia. The larger van could be manufacturer at the Zil premises in Moscow. Is there any progress regarding the two projects?
Yes of course. For one of these projects, the smaller vehicle, we went through the next milestone, so we can say that it is on track.

Excerpts from Ceauto Newsletter No11 . The full interview is available for subscribers