No final decision has yet been made regarding the establishment of a joint holding company by Russian truck company KamAZ and the Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ), Belarusian Prime Minister Mikhail Myasnikovich said at a meeting with the MAZ staff on Friday, according to the press office of the Council of Ministers.
"We are maintaining that the merger should be ‘non-monetary,’ with only control, not money, changing the owner", said Mr. Myasnikovich.
The holding company should be set up on a parity basis, he stressed.
The premier said that project of combining the two industrial giants so that they only supplement each other had "quite bright prospects". "But no one should sustain losses. Issues concerning the use of the production capacities, the companies’ product ranges and rules for the distribution of profits will have to be considered," he said.
The objective is to make more profits and coordinate operations in external markets to ensure that the companies do not stand in each other’s way, Mr. Myasnikovich added.
Talking to reporters this past September, KamAZ Director General Sergei Kogogin said that he hoped that the deal to combine the two companies would be sealed by the end of the year.
In February, Rostekhnologii (Russian Technologies), a state corporation that holds a 49.9-percent stake in KamAZ, proposed a deal whereby KamAZ would hold 100 percent in MAZ, while the Belarusian government would receive a stake in the Russian company in exchange. The Belarusian government said, for its part, that it would like a joint holding company to have 49-percent stakes in both MAZ and KamAZ.
Sergei Chemezov, director general of Russian Technologies, noted that a stake in KamAZ is "much more expensive" than a similar stake in MAZ for objective reasons.
On August 17, MAZ Director General Alyaksandr Barowski revealed that Russia`s Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ) had offered to buy a 25-percent stake in the company.
