Turkmenistan to buy 1,000 KAMAZ trucks

Russian truck maker KAMAZ, which is struggling to clear its stockpiles, will sell more than 1,000 vehicles to Turkmenistan for $100 million, reported Reuters on Tuesday.

KAMAZ, in which Germany's Daimler took a 10 percent stake in December, has been forced to idle its assembly lines three times since November as it tries to sell its stockpiles before producing more trucks. Russia's construction firms and heavy industries, where KAMAZ finds most of its customers, have been forced to scale back production and cancel projects amid the global financial crisis.

Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov signed an order last week to buy the trucks for government use.

KAMAZ has supplied around 10,000 trucks to Turkmenistan in the past few years and has opened the region's largest servicing centre in its capital Ashgabat.