Wednesday, August 01, 2012 -
Uzbek state-owned car manufacturing firm Uzavtosanoat will not be producing buses with German automobile maker Daimler AG despite earlier talks, a Daimler spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
Uzavtosanoat backed out of the plans due to the difficulties in the Uzbek market, the Reuters news agency reported the spokeswoman as saying.
The agreement to work together to produce passenger buses was first reached in May 2010, with Daimler owning 51 percent of the venture and Uzavtosanoat owning the remainder of the shares.
The project was originally supposed to begin production in September.
The German Embassy in Tashkent said the major investment project had not been abandoned by either side, but did not say why talks had not led to the expected results.
"We don't know the reasons the partners cannot agree the joint venture’s creation," an embassy official told Interfax in November 2011.
Uzavtosanoat and Daimler’s subsidiary Mercedes-Benz Buses Central Asia had in May 2010 signed agreement on establishing the $31 million project to build 600 buses annually.