Oulmi: African factories won’t compete with Volkswagen Algeria …our prices are lower by 20 percent

Sovac Group’s General Manager, Mourad Oulmi, stated in Algiers that the establishment of the Volkswagen factory in Algeria will help create 1,800 direct jobs and 3,500 indirect jobs.

“It’s a thoughtful choice because Algeria is the first Volkswagen market in North Africa. We are very profitable in terms of potential, market and quality,” Mr Oulmi said Sunday in an interview with “Echorouk”. 

Our interlocutor affirmed that the plant, built on an area of 150 hectares in the industrial zone of Sidi Khettab in Relizane province (western Algeria), will start producing 12,000 vehicles per year as from 2017. 

A pace that “is expected to steadily increase to reach 500,000 by 2019, an average of 100 units every day,” he said. He added: “The vehicle models that will be assembled will be Golf 7, Seat Ibiza, Skoda Octavia and VW Caddy.” 

Mr Oulmi pointed to several economic spin-offs stemming from this new project specifically in terms of job creation. “Initially, it will create 1,800 direct jobs and 3,500 indirect jobs,” he said. 

The CEO of Sovac further indicated that this new plant differs from the Renault plant in Oued Tlelat, in the western province of Oran, “since it will be possible to export part of its vehicle production abroad, notably to other countries of the African continent,” he underscored.

The same official also emphasized that these vehicles will be “cheaper than imported ones”. In addition, he said that one of the conditions of the specifications stipulates that the carmaker must locally manufacture 15% of the spare parts constituting the vehicles produced in Algeria three years after the plant was launched. 

“A rate that should be shored up to 40% after a period of five years,” he underlined. 

The agreement to build an assembly plant of four vehicle models by the German carmaker Volkswagen has been concluded recently in Algiers between the Algerian Group Sovac and Volkswagen in the presence of industry and mines minister, Mr. Abdeslem Bouchouareb.