Local automobile manufacturers sold only 69,303 cars between January and August, down 19% from a year earlier despite a sharp rise of 31% last month, the Vietnam Association of Automobile Manufacturers (VAMA) reported.
On-year decrease was led by sales of commercial vehicles, which dropped 28% on-year to 35,136 units. SUV/MPV car sales fell 18% to 16,499 units in the period, VAMA said in a report.
The VAMA report also showed that auto sales in August increased by 31% to 10,555 units from a year earlier, a slight decrease as compared to the number of the previous month.
Two segments that were major drivers for growth last month are commercial vehicles which grew 41% from last August to 4,740 units; and passenger ones which rose 50% to 3,528 units.
In the first eight months, auto sales reductions were reported for almost all VAMA members, excluding VMC and VinaStar (Mitsubishi) which gained car sales growth of 71% and 3%, respectively.
Although witnessing an on-year fall of 5% in auto sales during the period, Toyota Vietnam remained the market leader with 16,641 units sold, followed by Truong Hai Auto, Vinamotor, GM Daewoo and Vinaxuki.
The domestic auto market is expected to be boisterous toward the end of this year as clients desire to take advantage of the tax incentives before the policy’s expiration in late December
Domestic automakers, however, cannot meet the soaring demand, causing clients to turn to imported cars.
With fierce competition from imported cars, VAMA forecast that consumption this year will be the same or lower than 110,000-120,000 domestically-produced cars last year.
VAMA has recently asked authorized state agencies to re-schedule the value added tax and registration fee until the end of 2010. (Vietnam Economic Times)
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