“Frankly, We Don’t Want to Be Compared to Detroit”
by T.L. James | 10:40 am, November 30, 2008 | Comments Off
And who can blame them?
Ex-communist Slovakia is fast becoming Europe’s Detroit: a humming automotive haven where — for now, at least — there’s no sign of the crisis gripping America’s Big Three.
“We’re talking about adding jobs, not eliminating them,” says Jun-Bum Park, general manager of Kia Motors Slovakia, which opened the sprawling euro1 billion ($1.36 billion) complex in Zilina in December 2006.
Maria Novakova, secretary-general of the Automotive Industry Association of Slovakia, forecasts the creation of up to 30,000 new jobs between now and 2010 as the country’s fledgling automotive sector prepares to shift into higher gear.
“We’re in a good position to grow,” she says. “Frankly, we don’t want to be compared to Detroit because we don’t want to end up like Detroit.”
And why is Slovakia fast becoming the “Motor Country”?
Analysts say carmakers are drawn to Slovakia because it has a cheap but skilled work force, low taxes, weak labor unions, good highways and other logistics, and a strategic location in the geographic heart of Europe that’s close to emerging markets in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. [emphasis mine]
When the day comes that Kia, Skoda, et al, are ‘benefits companies that produce cars on the side’, well, I suppose then we can talk about Slovakia becoming the ‘new Detroit’.
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