Nissan expects China sales to recover in three months

TOKYO: Nissan Motor Co, the Japanese automaker that sells the most cars in China, expects sales in the world’s largest motor vehicle market to rebound within three months, as demand for Japanese-branded vehicles recovers.

“We’ve seen growth in retail yearon-year in March and year to date,” Andy Palmer, executive vice-president of the Yokohama, Japan-based carmaker told Bloomberg Television’s John Dawson in an interview on Wednesday. “When we are seeing retail growing, we can be pretty sure that within three months we will see wholesale coming back to a position better than the previous year.”

Nissan sales in China, its largest market, fell 17% to 110,000 units last month and declined 5.3% in 2012, as anti-Japan sentiment related to a territorial dispute deterred consumers from buying cars made by automakers including Toyota Motor Corp.