General Motors’ recently announced scaling down of its activities in the Russian Federation was apparently a big enough event to be commented upon by the Kremlin.
The President of Russia’s Office said on Thursday it regretted GM’s decision to reduce its presence in the country, adding that the U.S. carmaker would lose out when the market returned to growth.
“The company, unfortunately, disadvantages itself amid the period when the market starts its activation phase. Anyway everything develops in a sinusoidal manner and growth will come after sales drop. We can say it for sure now. Then the company will find itself among the losers,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Sputnik News.
“We can feel sorry about it, but on the other hand, there is never a vacuum on the market, when one company leaves, another one will immediately take its place,” he added.
General Motors announced on Wednesday it would shut its Russian assembly plant and withdraw the Opel brand from the market from December 2015. The automaker explained the move by the need to restructure its business to cope with a prolonged decline in car sales.
However, the move does not include luxury and high-end models, which are not affected by the Russian car market’s decline. GM said it would keep selling Cadillacs as well as higher-end Chevrolets such as the Corvette, Camaro and Tahoe. For Cadillac, Russia is its fourth largest market in the world.
The U.S. automaker’s announcement will not affect its joint venture with AvtoVAZ either, the Russian company’s press service said on Wednesday.
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