Abdelmalek Sellal said the project with PSA, which owns the Peugeot, Citroen and DS brands, would “come into being this year” at a press conference wi..
Algiers: Algeria is expected to sign a deal with French carmaker PSA to open a plant in the North African country “this year”, Algeria’s prime minister said Thursday.
Abdelmalek Sellal said the project with PSA, which owns the Peugeot, Citroen and DS brands, would “come into being this year” at a press conference with France’s Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who is visiting Algeria.
“We are analysing the situation of the automotive industry and are conducting an audit to rebalance our projects,” Sellal said.
“We want to produce vehicles according to market demand and consider exporting” them, he said.
The deal was reportedly already near being signed when former French premier Manuel Valls visited Algeria last year, but has since not been signed.
Once one of Africa’s biggest car markets, Algeria is embarking on an ambitious programme aimed at replacing hundreds of thousands of foreign imports with domestically produced models.
To counter a sharp drop in the price of oil, its main source of revenue, the country hopes to develop its domestic automotive industry.
The industry has been given incentives to produce more models after the government radically slashed imports.
In November last year, Volkswagen signed an agreement for the construction of a vehicle assembly plant in Algeria.
Volkswagen became the second car manufacturer to establish an assembly plant in the country, after France’s Renault inaugurated a multi-million-euro plant there in 2014.
Algeria in 2014 was Africa’s second-largest car market in terms of sales, with more than 400,000 vehicles imported annually, but last year it cut import licences by half.
