More imported cars enter the market, prices still increase
Despite the fact that imported cars have begun to return to the market, some manufacturers are still "comfortably" increasing the prices of some domestically assembled car models compared to last year.
March is a "happy" month for those who are waiting to own imported cars when the documents required by Decree 116 from Thailand and Indonesia are gradually approved along with other markets such as the US, UK, Germany... However, up to this point, only Honda has been able to bring cars to Vietnam and started selling the first batch of products under the preferential import tax of 0% effective from the beginning of 2018.
The remaining car manufacturers such as Toyota, Ford… do not have exact information on when the car batch will arrive in the country. While some "slow-selling" imported car models still have cars to sell, the pickup truck segment is almost sold out, showing signs of price manipulation, or Toyota's Fortuner SUV has long been absent from the market because there are no more cars to sell. The current story with models like Toyota Fortuner is not how much the selling price will decrease after tax incentives, but when the cars will be available on the market.
Many slow-selling car models continue to have sharp price reductions despite being imported cars. |
Thus, the market currently has only Honda with tax-free imported cars sold at prices hundreds of millions of dong lower than before Tet, but still subject to tax. However, recently, the Japanese car company has unexpectedly increased the price slightly by 5 million dong for all imported car models such as CR-V, Civic, Jazz and Accord compared to the previously listed price, customers who ordered cars before April are not affected. Honda Vietnam explained that the new selling price is applied "after calculating the actual factors affecting the import of cars".
Unlike many imported car models that are being priced by dealers or are inactive because there are no more cars to sell, domestically assembled cars are going in two different directions. In particular, slow-selling car models continue to stimulate demand, such as GM Vietnam reducing prices by tens of millions of VND for Aveo, Spark, Cruze or Captiva. In particular, Nissan continues to reduce the price of Teana by 104 million VND for the second time, bringing the car price to 1.195 billion VND.
However, in another direction, Nissan did not forget to slightly increase the price of the domestically assembled X-Trail model from 25-27 million VND. This is a notable competitor of the Mazda CX-5 and Honda CR-V in the mid-size Crossover segment for urban areas. Not only Nissan X-Trail, recently the two compatriots from Japan mentioned above have also changed their selling prices, slightly higher than before.
Domestically assembled cars tend to increase in price, especially for best-selling cars. |
Not only the official price increase, the actual selling price at some dealers also fluctuates according to the law of supply and demand of the market. Best-selling car models from most brands are tending to increase slightly from a few million to tens of millions of dong. Even the previous incentives are also cut or customers are "forced" to buy additional equipment for highly "competitive" car models.
This is considered an unusual sign reflecting the instability of the automobile market because as usual, the time after Lunar New Year is when car sales are at their slowest, car companies and dealers "compete" to launch promotions and discounts to achieve sales targets. It is expected that these instabilities will continue until the end of the year shopping season.