	citroen expects higher profits helped by ax automobiles citroen expects rising sales of its new ax compact car to help boost profits significantly this year continuing a financial recovery after six straight years of losses president jacques calvet said speaking to reporters during weekend trials for the new ax sports model he said all the budgetary forecasts that we have been able to make show a relatively significant improvement in compared with he added citroen part of the private peugeot sa peup pa group increased its share of the french new car market to pct in first two months from pct a year earlier it is aiming for an average pct share throughout the year after pct in the firm believes it is on target to raise its share of the european market excluding france to pct this year from pct in our first problem is to produce enough vehicles to meet the demand calvet said this is a relatively new problem for us citroen lost close to two billion francs in but cut the deficit to mln in helped by moves to modernise its range and improve productivity calvet indicated last december he expected citroen s profit to be between and million francs this weekend he said that those profit estimates remain about the same perhaps even a little more optimistic some of this optimism is due to the early success of the ax launched on the french market last october it will be available throughout most of western europe within four months the car has registered just over sales it is being built at citroen s large plant at aulnay sous bois in northern paris as well as at rennes in brittany and vigo in spain with production just reaching target level of cars a day the car which citroen markets as an intermediate model between its long running cv and the visa is designed to compete with the renault volkswagen polo and opel corsa the ax had built up its market share in france to around four pct last month calvet said our hope is that once the ax is fully developed we will have between and seven per cent of the national market reuter 
