Auto sales fall 14% in August
Automobile sales in August were down 14% against July, to 20,655 units, despite the introduction of a range of promotional programmes, according to the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA).
Sales of passenger cars fell 12%, to 15,419 units, while those of commercial vehicles fell 19% to 4,966 and special-use vehicles 20% to 270.
There were 12,869 domestically-assembled vehicles sold during the month, down 20% against July, along with 7,786 imported cars, a fall of 2%.
Analysts said that the reduction of registration fees on domestically-assembled automobiles by half, which led to fall of VND15-VND300 million in the total cost of a car, helped boost sales.
Toyota Vietnam led VAMA members, with sales of 4,259 units, followed by Mazda with 2,644 vehicles and Kia with 2,541 vehicles.
Honda Vietnam, however, led in sales growth, selling 1,634 units in August, up 38 percent against July. The CR-V 2020 and City were “hot” models during the month, with respective sales of 935 and 459 units.
VAMA members sold 151,903 automobiles of all kinds in the first eight months of 2020, down 25% year-on-year. The decline in the sales of passenger cars was 26%, commercial vehicles 22%, and special-use vehicles 36%.
The figures, however, do not reflect the situation in the market as a whole, as they exclude non-VAMA members such as Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Volvo, VinFast, and TC Motor.
TC Motor alone sold 5,367 vehicles in August and 40,987 vehicles in the first eight months of the year, while VinFast sold 1,494 units in August.
Insiders said the COVID-19 pandemic has led to more cautious spending among consumers, and August coincided with the seventh lunar month, which is not a good month for buying or selling anything in the minds of Vietnamese. The second half of the seventh lunar month is in September, so results may be similar to August, they predict.
