MOSCOW (Xinhua) -- Russia’s largest carmaker Avtovaz said on Monday it could file for bankruptcy if it fails to restructure its debt, but promised that production will not be suspended, Russian news agencies reported.

Avtovaz is currently considering several options for debt restructuring, and the simplest is protection against creditors, which is a realistic solution, Oleg Lobanov, the company’s vice president, told reporters in the Volga city of Togliatti, where the company is based.
The company is inviting state-owned banks to purchase some of its planned convertible bonds worth 50 billion rubles (1.7 billion U.S. dollars).
“The bonds issue would allow us to refinance current debts within the shortest possible time frame,” said Lobanov.      “We will have to file for bankruptcy if Avtovaz is unable to refinance its debt,” he admitted.      “In any case we are not talking about a halt of production, but certain legal procedures that would give us extra time to solve the issue of debt restructuring,” he was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.      The company’s president, Igor Komarov, said Avtovaz’s core debt came to 62 billion rubles (2.1 billion U.S. dollars) as of early October and it could rise to 75.2 billion rubles (2.6 billion dollars) by the end of this year.      Komarov also announced a revised plan to slash 21,800 jobs by 2012, instead of the earlier announced 27,600.      Avtovaz, famous for its Lada car, has a production capacity of over 800,000 vehicles annually. Its sales tumbled 44 percent in the first half of this year compared to a year ago, according to the Association of European Businesses in Russia.