TOKYO, March 20. /TASS/. Japanese automobile manufacturers have no plans of closing their plants in Russia but the production volume there in some cases may change depending on the market situation, the representatives of companies that have assembly plants in Russia told TASS on Friday.
"Now the situation in the Russian economy is complex, however our corporation looks at it in terms of long-term business," the representative of the Nissan Motor Co global communications department said.
"We have made vast investments and believe that the prospects remain. We also get information that Russian clients like Nissan cars. So we have no plans of shutting production or reducing it," he said.
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The Toyota Motor Corp. press service also confirmed that it has no information on changing plans of production in Russia.
The press service of Mazda Motor Corp. headquarters told TASS: "Our facilities won’t be closed in Russia." "The production volume may be adjusted depending on the demand, however this is a common practice. It is not linked to any particularities of the current situation in Russia," it said.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. told TASS that "there are no plans of closing the plant in Russia."
"We saw a decrease in sales volume in the 2014 financial year, the sales situation is difficult and is affected by the changes in the foreign exchange rates. However, in the mid-and long-term prospect, Russia remains an important market and we have no changes in this assessment. There is no sense in leaving Russia only due to the currency fluctuations or changes with sales volumes," the company stressed.
The comments come after US car producer General Motors announced Wednesday that it considers Russia as a market with "unclear long-term perspective" and scraps the majority of its projects in Russia worth more than $319 mln.
Out of its current projects in Russia, GM will only keep GM-AVTOVAZ, a joint venture with Avtovaz, which produces all-wheel drive Chevrolet NIVA offroaders.
General Motors announced that it would close the St. Petersburg plant and halt contract assembly at the facility of Kaliningrad’s Avtotor and Nizhny Novgorod’s GAZ.
The company also decided to withdraw the Opel brand and all the mass models of the Chevrolet brand from the Russian market, keeping only the premium models of the latter and also the Cadillac brand.