Citroen to halt assembly of Berlingo at Nysa car plant

Citroen announced yesterday that it will stop assembling its Berlingo model at the Daewoo-FSO-owned Nysa car plant as of March of this year. According to Joanna Siuchta from Citroen Polska, Citroen is terminating its assembly activities of the Berlingo series in Poland since the country's lower import customs on new cars make importing Berlingos from Spain a more attractive, less costly alternative for the French company. Citroen at the same time said the fate of its C-15 model, which is also assembled at the Nysa plant, is contingent on receiving bank guarantees for payment of imported car parts received. Sales of the C-15 model have dropped this year by 51% compared to the same period in 2000. Nysa Motor employs 100 workers assembling the French cars. (Rzeczpospolita, p.B4) M.T.