Export potential of the Russian automobile industry: evaluation of directions and volumes

Automobile industry is among the priority industries in Russia from the perspective of non-oil export development. It appears to be very timely to evaluate its export potential due to a significant contraction of the Russian car market and excessive idle capacity of the industry. The paper is based on international Export Decision Support Models and on the analysis of a vast amount of international economic indicators. It aims to identify the most attractive countries for Russia’s passenger automobiles and trucks exports and to evaluate the potential increases in absolute physical volumes of export growth. The three-stage procedure eliminates unattractive markets. The first stage filter removes from consideration countries with high political and commercial risk and with low macroeconomic size. The second filter is for export opportunity assessment. And the third filter describes the level of availability from the point of view of logistics costs and trade barrier. 17 countries which fail the selection were enrolled in the list due to potentially promising markets for Russian products. Then the total export potential was calculated on the basis of Russian potential share in a particular country taking into account index trade availability and the average price of a car imported to each country. As a result, top-5 countries for Russian cars and trucks exports are found, and aggregate export potential is estimated at 194 thousand passenger vehicles and 30 thousand trucks per year for the next few years.