Romanian Carmaker Dacia Might Drop 3-4,000 Employees In Spring – Manager

“We hope to find solutions as soon as possible to revive the sales and implicitly the production. For now, we are below the number of orders we planned, we were thinking of 200 cars daily, while the situation shows we would sell 50 cars. We’re not considering sacking personnel, as we are aware of the fact that sales figures are usually low in January and February, but in spring we might scrap 3,000-4,000 jobs, if the program to counter the effects of the crisis does not work,” Fourmont said.

If the crisis intensifies, 130,000 jobs would be scrapped in the auto industry.

Automobile Dacia, the Romanian carmaking unit of France’s Renault, said Monday it will halt production again for two weeks, between January 26 and February 8, following dramatically declining demand.

Under normal circumstances, Dacia employees work in three shifts.

Sales of the company on the local market dropped on the year by 16.7% in 2008, to 84,707 units.

New car registrations in Romania decreased by 8.6% last year, to 285,504 units, while used car registrations climbed 151.4% to a record level of 310,885 units.