Car sales fell by half in February

The Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association (VAMA) said that car consumption in February reached only over 11,700 vehicles, down nearly half compared to the previous month.

Specifically, according to VAMA, in the total number of vehicles sold in February, there were 6,446 passenger cars; nearly 4,600 commercial vehicles and 673 specialized vehicles, with corresponding decreases compared to the previous month of 54%; 44% and 21%, respectively.

Notably, the business results of February saw a sharp decline in both domestically assembled cars and completely imported cars. Specifically, domestically assembled cars last month reached 9,243 cars, down 46% compared to the previous month, and the number of completely imported cars was 2,475 cars, down 57% compared to the previous month.

According to the business community, the number of cars in February decreased partly because nearly half of the first half of February fell during the Lunar New Year holiday and the remaining time was the first month of the year, so many people were still hesitant to buy cars.

Thus, this is the second consecutive month in the first two months of 2016 that the number of cars sold has decreased sharply compared to the previous month.

Car sales decreased by 49% in February 2016 compared to the previous month. (Illustration: Internet)

According to VAMA, the number of cars sold in the first month of 2016 reached 23,165 vehicles, down 21% compared to December 2015, including 14,090 passenger cars; 8,200 commercial vehicles and 875 specialized vehicles.

However, compared to the same period last year, the number of cars sold in the first two months of this year still increased quite a bit. According to VAMA, in the first two months of this year, the whole country sold 34,883 cars of all kinds, an increase of 8% compared to the same period last year.

A notable point of the automobile market in the first two months of this year is that the sales of domestically assembled cars increased by 24% while imported cars decreased by 24% compared to the same period last year. This is a rare result of this reversal, because from mid-2014 to the whole year of 2015, the sales of imported cars always had a higher growth rate than domestically assembled cars.

One of the reasons for the decline in the consumption of imported cars, according to the business community, is that the price of imported cars since the beginning of 2016 has been higher due to the special consumption tax on imported cars that must be added to the profits of the business, transportation costs and other related costs. A group of consumers previously rushed to buy imported cars to avoid the new special consumption tax calculation method according to Decree 108/2015/ND-CP, which took effect from January 1, 2016.

Last year, according to VAMA, the number of cars sold nationwide reached nearly 245,000 vehicles, a record for the domestic car market to date and an increase of 55% compared to 2014.

Auto dealers and analysts say this year's auto market will likely not increase as dramatically as last year, but will still increase by 10-15% compared to 2015 sales results./.