Desperate Race on the Spot

On March 17, Zaporizhzhia saw festivities dedicated to putting into production the ZAZ-1103, a new model of the Ukrainian Tavriya. No doubt, the management of the joint venture knew how to demonstrate the plant conveyor, operational again, and the upgraded version of the Ukrainian car. The only and the most important question that bothered the witnesses of this historic event, is how long this job can continue given the lack of solvent Ukrainian buyers.

Meanwhile, two days earlier the AvtoZAZ-Daewoo Board of Directors gathered again on the initiative of Oleksandr Sotnykov for the first time in a long time, reports The Day's correspondent Viktor PUZHAICHEREDA from Zaporizhzhia. The Chairman of the Board announced that the joint-venture has a new full participant, General Motors, with which a series of working protocols has been signed, some of them by the Korean party as well.

As the DAEWOO-Ukraine press service explained to our correspondent, the Board of Directors has the right to take any action it wants. On the other hand, the Korean party is not likely to waive its two demands: that Sotnykov and his team be dismissed, and the joint venture's General Director (the Korean party) be given two votes. The Koreans will agree to join the new working group, created to solve existing problems, only if these preliminary conditions are fulfilled.

The position of the Ukrainian government, voiced by the Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Kuratchenko, can hardly be called readiness to compromise either. According to Kuratchenko, "Mr. Sotnykov shares the position of Ukraine and the enterprise," and his dismissal is out of the question. In addition, Kuratchenko thinks that return of the $15 million previously allocated to the joint venture (and now demanded by the Koreans) will strip it of its working capital. However, according to explanations by the DAEWOO-Ukraine press service, the Korean party is very surprised at such an approach and is standing its ground.

In this stalemate, Price Waterhouse Coopers is developing a new business plan. All our correspondent managed to find out from the planners is that they had identified the market volume and the Zaporizhzhia joint-venture's possible market share.