The car industry superintendent was fired from the government after attempts to increase car production failed

The post of director of the automotive industry and railway department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which has been vacant for six months, will soon become vacant again. Igor Boitsov, who occupied him, will be released in a week, writes Vedomosti, citing government sources.

He only lasted three months. The reasons for the dismissal are unknown. One of the interlocutors said that Boytsov “just found himself in the wrong place.” It is not known who will replace him.

By February, the post of superintendent of the Russian auto industry had been vacant for six months. Denis Pak, who had held him for five years, resigned in September. Now he is the president of Kaliningrad Avtotor.

Igor Boytsov began his career in 2000 at the Ford production plant in Vsevolozhsk. He managed the launch of the production of the second generation Ford Focus in Russia. For years, he held high positions at Toyota and Nissan enterprises in St. Petersburg, and was also the director of the Renault plant in Moscow.

After Pak’s departure, the 44-year-old Maxim Gorin, who for several years headed the department for the development of transport communications at the Moscow Department of Transport, was to be appointed curator of the Russian automotive industry. However, the security forces did not agree to his candidacy, a Vedomosti source said. Now Gorin works as an adviser to the general director of Avtodom Andrei Olkhovsky.

Boitsov’s key task when he took up his post at the Ministry of Industry and Trade was to save the domestic automotive industry from sanctions in connection with the war with Ukraine and the mass exodus of foreign car manufacturers, some of which were sold to local factories for pennies.

The militants had to establish import substitution, introduce new models on a local component base and create opportunities for the production of auto parts in the country, said Sergey Udalov, executive director of Avtostat.

However, with the advent of the top manager in the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the situation did not improve. Yes, pand in the first quarter of 2023, 86.4 thousand were produced. passenger cars, almost 65% less than the year before.

In general, because of the war in Ukraine, the Russian automotive industry, which directly employs 300 thousand people, and taking into account related industries – three million, has moved back half a century into the past. At the end of 2022, the production of passenger cars fell by 67%, Rosstat reported.

The departure of foreign concerns and the cessation of component deliveries paralyzed production from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. As a result, 450,000 cars rolled off the assembly lines of other car factories. cars – the minimum number since the first years of Leonid Brezhnev’s rule.