September auto sales up 32 percent

Hanoi (VNA) – Sales of automobiles in September increased 32 percent against the previous month to reach 27,252 units, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA) reported on October 10.

Sales of passenger cars expanded 34 percent to 20,630 units and commercial vehicles, up 29 percent to 6,396 units. Meanwhile, special-use vehicles dropped 16 percent month-on-month to 226 units.

September sales included 17,826 locally-assembled vehicles, up 28 percent, and 9,426 imported vehicles, up 41 percent.

During the first nine months, a total of 179,155 vehicles were sold, a drop of 22 percent year-on-year, with passenger cars falling 23 percent, commercial vehicles, down 20 percent, and special-use vehicles, down 36 percent.

Insiders said the figures have failed to reflect the whole market situation as they excluded sales of many brands that are not VAMA members like Audi, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Volvo and TC Motor.

TC Motor unveiled on October 10 that it sold 8,213 automobiles last month, a rise of 53 percent from August, while VinFast sold a record of 3,684 units.

The combined sales of VAMA members, TC Motor, and VinFast reached 39,147 in September.

TC Motor, Toyota, KIA, VinFast, Mazda, Ford, Mitsubishi and Honda are the best selling in the Vietnamese automobile market.

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 20,000 units per month during the January-September period, as compared with 33,000 units last year./.