Vladimir Putin has ordered that all bureaucrats should stop buying foreign-made cars. Photo / AP
Vladimir Putin has ordered that all bureaucrats should stop buying foreign-made cars. Photo / AP
The frequent sightings of black Mercedes, with tinted windows and a flashing blue light, ferrying government officials to work through the dense Moscow traffic could soon be a thing of the past after Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin ordered that all bureaucrats should stop buying foreign-made cars.
"I believethat all state and municipal authorities, customers and companies who receive funding from the budget, should have to start buying cars produced on the territory of Russia and the Common Economic Area in the near future," said Putin on a tour of a major car factory. The Common Economic Area is a customs union between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
According to official statistics, between 2007 and 2009, Russian government bodies and state-controlled companies spent around £100 million ($194 million) on luxury cars, while domestic car manufacturers such as Lada and Volga struggled.
In 1997, Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov proposed that foreign luxury vehicles should be replaced with chunky Volga sedans. The resulting decree was largely ignored by bureaucrats.
Although the new move may boost local companies, "Russian-made" cars include any car assembled inside Russia.
Russia has used high import tariffs to entice foreign car manufacturers to set up assembly plants inside the country, and although many of the factories are simply assembly points, theoretically it is now possible to buy "Russian-made" Peugeots, Fords and Hyundais. BMW has an assembly plant in the Baltic city of Kaliningrad.
Putin has tried in the past to promote Russian cars. In 2010, he drove more than 1600km across Siberia in a canary-yellow Lada Kalina, though the image was slightly spoilt by a video posted online that showed the Lada being trailed by a motorcade of around 100 cars - most of them foreign-made.
It was also confirmed that the new ruling on domestically produced cars would not apply to Putin himself or other top-rank officials.
