Is Romania on the Peugeot map?

French group PSA Peugeot-Citroen is looking for a suitable place to host a 700 million-euro factory in Eastern Europe, with Romania mentioned as a possible location.
Fiercer competition on the auto market is pushing the company to relocate its production farther east.
“The selection of potential locations is currently in progress, with many places already visited in this area (CEE), while others will be inspected early next year,” Marc Ferrant, PR Officer of the French Group told Ziarul Financiar. “It is, however, too early to say if Romania has a location eligible for short-listing,” the PSA Peugeot Citroen official said.
The list of the French includes the Czech Republic, Hungary or Poland (with a special mark for the third country) on the top positions, but also Slovakia and Romania, which have lower production and workforce costs.
“An investment of the French group in Romania would not be a first time,” Marius Carp, chief executive of the Association of Carmakers and Importers in Romania feels.
Citroen has previously carried out an over 20-year joint venture with the Romanian State in Craiova, which resulted in the Oltcit make. Oltcits started being actually made in 1982, with the French backing out in 1988. Next in line for the Craiova plant was Daewoo, which started investing here in 1994. Oltcits stopped being made in 1996, as they were replaced by Daewoos, still produced in Craiova.
The plant PSA Peugeot-Citroen will build is supposed to have a productive capacity of at least 300,000 small cars a year, which would turn it into one of the company’s most important production centres, starting 2006.
The investment is part of the company’s strategy to boost production to four million units in 2006, compared with 2.1 million units in 1997 and 3.25 million this year.
PSA Peugeot Citroen is running another investment in the region, as well, in the sense that it is working with Japanese Toyota carmaker on the construction of a plant in the Czech Republic. Hungary and Poland competed for this investment, as well, with the latter initially considered the likely winner, as in the case of the second investment.
The two PSA Peugeot Citroen brands registered total sales of more than 2,600 units in Romania last year, with Peugeot as the best-seller of the two (nearly 2,000 cars sold). Sales of the two brands soared this year, with nearly 3,000 Peugeots and 850 Citroens sold in the first ten months.