Export market is new vehicle market’s star performer
29 760 The number of new vehicle exports last month
THE EXPORT market was the new vehicle market’s star performer last month while the local market registered modest growth in light new vehicles sales, driven by purchases by the vehicle rental industry.
New vehicle exports last month rose by 35.6 percent to 29 760 from the 7 819 units exported in February last year.
“The South African vehicle manufacturing and exporting industry was now showing clear signs of realising its full potential, particularly in respect of vehicle exports,” Nico Vermeulen, the director of the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA (Naamsa) said yesterday.
Vermeulen said that Naamsa anticipated that on the back of normalised industry production, exports this year could improve by up to 20 percent to a record of between 320 000 and 330 000 vehicles.
Total domestic new vehicle sales increased last month by 1.1 percent to 52 368 units from the 51 784 units sold in February last year.
New car sales improved by 1.5 percent to 34 909 units in February last year while sales of new light commercial vehicles, bakkies and mini-buses grew by 1.8 percent to 15 139 units in the same period.
Vermeulen said despite the lack of sales data on the contribution by Mercedes-Benz to car rental sales, the car rental industry had again made a positive contribution and had accounted for 9.9 percent of new car sales last month.
Mercedes-Benz South Africa does not provide full details of its monthly sales.
Kamilla Kaplan, an economist at Investec, said the growth in new passenger vehicle sales last month was modest and in the first two months of the year sales growth had contracted by 1.3 percent year on year.
“This is reflective of constrained household spending. High consumer indebtedness, subdued real income growth, the implementation of increased personal income tax rates and substantial fuel levies will curtail consumers’ ability and willingness to spend.
“Although low statistical base factors will provide some boost to the annual growth performance, survey indications do not signal a fundamental acceleration in passenger vehicle sales growth in the coming quarter,” she said.
Nicholas Nkosi, the head of Standard Bank vehicle and asset finance – personal markets, said while last month’s passenger vehicles numbers showed a slight improvement year on year, this was not necessarily a true reflection of the change in consumers buying because sales were masked by the car rental industry contributing 9.9 percent of the overall passenger vehicles sales.
Kaplan said the sales performance of commercial vehicles was likely to be affected by relatively low economic growth and fragile business confidence while delays in the rollout of major government infrastructure projects would impede the sales performance of heavy commercial vehicles.