MOSCOW, December 22. /TASS/. Russian major car producer AvtoVAZ expects its domestic sales to drop 18% on the year to 375,000 cars in 2014, CEO Bo Andersson said in an interview to Rossiya 24 TV channel Monday.

“It is evident that the Russian ruble’s volatility against the US dollar and the euro will hurt the whole market. It will affect our production to a lesser degree, as 81% of our operational costs are ruble-denominated…This year we expect 375,000 cars to be sold in Russia, though at the beginning of the year we expected to sell 450,000 cars in 2014,” Andersson said.

On December 10, a company official said sales will decrease 18.3% to 437,000 cars in 2014, including 385,000 cars to be sold locally, a 15.6% drop on the year.

AvtoVAZ also expects output to rise 20% to around 619,597,000 cars in 2015 as production of Lada models and cars produced under orders of Renault-Nissan car alliance increases, the CEO said.

In November he said that the 2015 output will grow 20% due to the increase of production of Renault Logan, Renault Sandero and Datsun models. The launch of the Lada Vesta model is scheduled for September 2015.

AvtoVAZ’ 2013 output amounted to 516,331,000 cars, including 20,826,000 units under orders of the alliance.

At the same time, the company does not plan to cut staff in 2015, Andersson said after it laid 9,000 workers off and decreased office stuff by 5,000 people in 2014, the CEO said.