Automobile sales surge in October

Hanoi (VNA) – Sales of automobiles by members of the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA) in October surged 22 percent against the previous month to reach 33,254 units.

The association said the figure almost caught up with the record sales of 33,484 units posted in January 2019.

 Sales of passenger cars expanded 23 percent to 25,339 units and commercial vehicles, up 17 percent to 7,528 units. Meanwhile, 387 special-use vehicles were sold, up 71 percent month-on-month.

 September sales included 20,498 locally-assembled vehicles, up 15 percent, and 12,756 imported vehicles, up 35 percent.

Among non-VAMA members, TC Motor reported sales of 7,839 automobiles in October, while VinFast sold 2,866 units.

The combined sales of VAMA members, TC Motor, and VinFast reached 43,959 in October.

For the 10-month period, a total of 212,409 vehicles were sold, a drop of 18 percent year-on-year.

 Toyota was the best selling brand in the past month with 8,841 units sold, followed by TC Motor with 7,839 units, and Kia with 4,685.

  Experts explained that the domestic automobile market has bounced back as the COVID-19 pandemic has been contained in Vietnam and businesses have offered an array of promotion programmes.

 However, they said, it is hard to raise this year’s sales to 400,000 units as recorded last year since the average monthly sales stood at only 21,000 units per month during the January-October period, as compared with 33,000 units last year./.