Dacia exports went up by more than 60% in the first half of this year, to almost 1.3 billion euros, Ziarul Financiar reported. The figure accounts for 10% of the overall Romanian market market exports. Dacia exports were mainly supported by car park renewal programs in Western Europe, which will come to an end in the last quarter of this year.

In 2004, when the Logan model was launched, Dacia exports represented less than 1% of Romania's total exports.

Exports by Automobile Dacia in the first half of 2009 registered an over 60% leap, to 130,668 cars. In Western Europe, Dacia sales rose by almost 100%, to 95,997 units, as Dacia is one of the brands boasting the strongest sales within Germany's old car scrap program.

In the first half of the year, Dacia sold globally 153,795 cars assembled both in Mioveni and in the plant of Morocco, Casablanca, according to statistical data provided by Renault Group. These were sold in Europe, Russia, but also on markets such as Brazil or Argentina.

Had Dacia not boosted production from 1,085 units per day at the beginning of this year to 1,340 cars daily at present, the country's economic rate of decline would have reached 9 percent at the end of this year, compared with 6.2 percent at present, according to Cezar Mereuta, a doctor of economics, vice-president of the Romanian Center for Economic Modeling.

On the Romanian market, Dacia sold 23,158 cars in H1, approximately 15% of the Mioveni production, down almost 50% compared with the similar period of last year, as the domestic car market posted a 55 percent decline in the first half.

Source: Ziarul Financiar