French Renault Group, which makes the Logan model, will boost the production capacity of the plant in Ploiesti from 235,000 to 350,000 units by January 2008.

This will increase the turnover of Automobile Dacia by over one billion euros, daily Ziarul Financiar reports."Our future plans include boosting the production capacity of the plant in Ploiesti, with production set to reach 350,000 vehicles per year as of January 2008," stated Francois Fourmont, the general manager of Automobile Dacia. Considering Dacia sold 164,000 vehicles in 2005 and made 1.2 billion-euro turnover, the increase in production capacity should increase the turnover of the Pitesti-based company to more than 2.5 billion euros. The operation will entail a 178 million-euro investment until the end of 2007, to add to the 650 million euros invested by the French Renault group in Dacia since taking over the plant in 1998.

The announcement was made on Tuesday at the headquarters of the Ministry of Administration and Interior (MAI), which received the last car out of the 6,000 Logans bought by public open tender at the end of 2005. "The Ministry was allocated funds to buy these cars by a government decision. This operation had 300 million RON (83.5 million euros) allocated, but the tender organised at the end of last year allowed us to manage with a lower amount," stated Vasile Blaga, Minister of Administration and Interior. The value of the contract brokered by the Ager Leasing company, almost 260 million RON (72 million euros), is to be paid until 2008.

Other companies to have participated in the MAI tender were the leasing company of the French group BRD-Groupe Societe Generale and Romexterra Leasing, Ager Leasing general manger Razvan Dumitrescu says. "This is a contract we wanted to get and is also the biggest our company has ever signed," Ziarul Financiar quotes Dumitrescu as saying. "Our bid was better than that of the bidder that came second by 4 million euros, which is why we won the contract." Ager Leasing had another contract, this time signed with the General Police Inspectorate in 2004. That contract was for 1,500 vehicles, worth 13.2 million euros. The 6,000 vehicles were divided among the national police that received 5,000 units, the Gendarmerie - 280 units, the Border Police - 185 units, while the rest went to the other MAI departments. Out of the 5,000 units allocated to the Police, 4,000 were used for maintaining peace, going to 1,650 police stations in cities, while the remaining 2,350 units helped cover the needs of all the rural stations in the country. These cars are not enough for MAI, covering only 58 percent of the Ministry's needs and 75 percent of the needs of the Police. This is why MAI intends to organise a new tender this autumn, to buy a further 2,000 vehicles.

"The next contract will probably be signed with Dacia again, because of the price/quality ratio and in order to maintain uniformity in the ministry," stated Nicolae Berechet, general secretary of MAI. This is the biggest contract ever signed by Automobile Dacia, its general manager, Francois Fourmont says.

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