November car market: A paradox

As the annual rule goes, November is always the thriving moment for the car market when customers have to rush and pay more but still patiently wait for their cars to be available. However, this year’s gloomy situation expressed a paradox with that rule.

Car sales continued to drop

Based on the sales report prepared by Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA), the total number of cars sold of all Association members in November 2010 and the past 11 months continued to fall. In particular, total sales in the past month only reached 11,198 units, a decrease of 9 percent compared with November 2009. Among which, the sales of MPVs changed slightly while those of 4-seat cars and commercial cars reduced respectively by 16 percent and 7 percent.

Cumulative sales as to November 2010 reached 99,798 units, decreasing by 4 percent over the same period last year whereas commercial cars dropped by 7 percent and 4-seat cars by 16 percent.

Thus, this was the fifth consecutive month of sales going down for VAMA members over the same period last year. Like the previous months, most major manufacturers were suffering this fall.

Specifically, sales of each type for VAMA members in November 2010 are as follows:

Suzuki was the member with most serious sales fall in the past month with only 188 cars sold, decreasing by 46 percent compared with October last year. The next company to suffer from strong sales drop was GM Daewoo, with 1,082 vehicles sold, down 37 percent. Truong Hai was still the name worth being honored as it could stabilize its strong growth of 40 percent and reach 3,048 vehicles consumed. With this result, Truong Hai, though ranked 2nd in November chart, continued to adhere to the sales of Toyota (with 3,321 units).

In top 10 best-selling cars of 11/2010, the top model Innova grew slightly compared with the previous month, reaching 811 units. This was also the best sales month of this multi-purpose vehicle in many recent months. Another noteworthy case in the past month was the Chevrolet Cruze with sales volume up to 361 units - the best result since its official launch in mid-April.

Impacts from tax policy and USD exchange rate

As the enterprises judged, domestically assembled car market declined partly because the US dollar exchange rate rose, partly because the stock and real estate markets remained bleak causing that consumers re-considered their shopping plans by end of the year.

Besides, after the information that the government would reduce import tax on less than 9 seats CBU cars from ASEAN countries from 83 percent to 70 percent, many people postponing their car shopping plans, waiting for the new tax to take effect also contributed to the decline of the domestic car market.

Thai Thanh

Top 10 best-selling cars in 11/2010:

Ranking chart of joint-ventures sales in 11/2010 over 11/2009

(*) Exclusive of bus chassis