Automobile sales drop 7 percent in September

Hanoi (VNA) – The Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAVA) on October 10 reported that automobile sales in September drop 20 percent compared to the same period last year and 4 percent over the previous month.

Among total 21,216 units of vehicles sold in September, 11,637 were passenger vehicles, down 7 percent; 8,700 commercial cars, unchanged sales; and 879 special-purpose vehicles, up 4 percent.

Particularly, sales of domestically-assembled automobiles were estimated at 14,739, a fall of 5 percent, while 6,477 imported vehicles were sold in the month, down 2 percent month on month.

In the first nine months of 2017, total sales were 198,253 units, a drop of 8 percent year on year. Both passenger and commercial vehicles saw a fall of 7 percent, while sales of special-purpose cars declined 18 percent.

Sales of domestic-assembled vehicles also slumped 28 percent, while that of imported vehicles rose 8 percent.

September was the fourth consecutive month that the automobile market suffers sale decrease, following a drop of 6 percent in August, 27 percent in July and 0.2 percent in June.

Experts held that major reason behind the situation is a cut of 10 percent in car import tax to 30 percent in early 2017, along with customers’ trend of postponing their purchase to wait for lower automobile prices as car import tax from ASEAN country is expected to reduce to zero percent in 2018.

The Ministry of Finance has proposed an exemption of special-consume tax to domestically-produced auto parts to create equal environment for domestically-assembled and imported cars.-VNA