Vietnam's car industry sold nearly 10,280 units in October, up 5 percent in September and 29 percent on the same month of last year, says Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA).

This was the highest figure that the automobile industry had ever sold in a month in this year. It was also the 7th consecutive month that its sales revenue was higher than last year’s figure.

More than 87,166 units were sold in the past ten month period, a 19 percent increase from a year earlier. The number of domestically assembled units was estimated at 75,766 (up 18 percent), while that of imported automobiles increased by 25 percent compared to the same period last year.

Automakers expect that the market will continue to grow, even above that level, in the last months of this year.

Carmakers in Vietnam sold a combined 9,785 units in September, up 24 percent on the previous month and 28 percent over same period last year. Of the figure, 4,070 were cars and 5,715 were trucks, up 32 percent and 19 percent month-on-month, respectively.

In a statement, VAMA said that if the recovery continued, the association would maintain its forecast of 109,000 units for the year compared with the original forecast of 100,000.

According to the Government Master Plan to 2010 with vision toward 2020, VAMA members are now making their best to increase market volume and accelerate localisation process to enhance the sector’s competitiveness to successfully challenge the Country’s regional and international integration. The current situation has opened good opportunity, but also a great challenge for VAMA members to improve further their business operations, product quality and services to meet increasingly higher requirements of the Vietnamese customers.-VNA