Etalon Corporation considers it contrary to the state interests to create favorable conditions for Belarusian vehicles' dominating in the market in the presence of several domestic manufacturers and supports the position of Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy, refusing to buy MAZ buses winning the tender.

"Most of the tenders for the purchase of vehicles today are held for funds from the EIB and the EBRD, but at the same time they contain conditions that are difficult for Ukrainian manufacturers to fulfill - for example, the availability of contracts for at least EUR8 million (i.e. about 40 buses) - in Ukraine today only Bogdan has such. Or there are many unprincipled or far-fetched technical conditions. And as a result, only MAZ passes," Volodymyr Butko, the president of Etalon Corporation, said at a press conference in Kyiv.

As the last example, he cited the announced tender for the purchase of buses for EIB funds by Mykolaiv (up to 50 units), in which only MAZ 206 buses pass according to the technical conditions. At the same time, he added, if approximately 50 buses can be bought for $ 90,000 per unit for the announced tender amount (EUR4.5 million), Etalon could offer a little more than EUR60,000 for a bus.

According to Vadym Shkarupin, the director of the Etalon Auto Trading House, not a single customer of the auction for funds from European banks (except Chernihiv) has taken advantage of the 15% price preference for local manufacturers.

"When we tell the city councils why you don't apply this preference or prescribe other impassable conditions, they say this is a requirement of the EBRD and the EIB. If we turn to the bank, they say that this is a customer. It turns out a vicious circle, which we have been walking for several years. It seems that there is some kind of agreement between European financial institutions and, for example, the government of Belarus, because e MAZ is a state-owned enterprise and enjoys state support," Butko notes.