Belarus and Russia decided to suspend work on an integration project MAZ — KAMAZ. This was stated by Belarusian Prime Minister Andrei Kobyakov on Friday, April 1, in an interview with RIA Novosti.
“Given the difficult economic conditions that have emerged currently on the car markets of the members of the Eurasian economic Union, in September 2015 in the framework of the meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union state the decision on the temporary suspension of work in this direction,” said Kobyakov.
In late February, Minister of industry and trade of Russia Denis Manturov said that the negotiation process for the integration of MAZ and KAMAZ has gone on too long and were no longer relevant.
In February 2011 the state Corporation “Rostechnologii” offered the leadership of Belarus to merge the two companies into one, resulting in KAMAZ should become the owner of 100% of shares of MAZ, while the Belarusian authorities were to receive a stake in the Russian automaker. However, the first Vice-Premier of Belarus Vladimir Semashko said that his country does not intend to sell more than 49% of MAZ.
Then Moscow suggested to create the joint venture “Rosbelavto” on the basis of MAZ and KAMAZ. In June 2012 Semashko said that Belarus will give 75 percent minus one share of MAZ in a joint venture with Russian “KAMAZ”. The Russian company, in turn, was to hand in the joint venture 49.9 percent of its shares. However, the project was never implemented.
