The ailing Russian car giant AvtoVAZ said...

"The preliminarily approved annual production plan stipulates the manufacture of 446,000 cars, including about 40,000 vehicles for export. Additionally, about 51,000 assembly sets are planned to be produced," the automaker said on its website.

The debt-saddled car giant, located in Togliatti in the Volga area, is known abroad for its Lada brand. Since it was established in 1970 as a joint project with Italian carmaker Fiat, it has made more than 25 million Lada cars, but last year just 294,700 rolled off its production lines.

AvtoVAZ has been hard hit by the global economic crisis, with sales plummeting due to reduced consumer demand and low-quality cars compared to foreign competitors.

According to data of the Association of European Businesses, AvtoVAZ"s sales fell 45%, year-on-year, in January-November 2009 to 321,600 cars.

With the federal program of cheap loans to individual buyers of domestic cars apparently failing last year amid a consumer slump,

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