Motor vehicles sales register 18.4% growth in 2017; 425,673 units sold

Sales of motor vehicles in 2017 grew by 18.4 percent to 425,673 units, exceeding the 400,500 unit sales target and nearly hitting the overall industry forecast of 450,000 units on strong surge in December sales as buyers tried to avoid the implementation of higher excise tax starting January 1, 2018, a report by the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines, Inc. (CAMPI) and the Truck Manufacturers Association (TMA) showed.

“We’ve exceeded our group’s year target of 400,500 units, and nearly hitting the whole industry target 450,000 units,” said CAMPI President Rommel Gutierrez. The industry sold a total of 359,572 units in the whole of 2016.

Based on the CAMPI-TMA report, December 2017 sales alone soared by 33.4 percent to 45,494 units as against 34,104 units of the same month in 2016. Sales in the fourth quarter has been historically higher than all the previous quarters, but the surge in December sales could have been triggered by the imposition of the excise auto excise tax starting January 1, 2018 as buyers tried to avoid the additional taxes.

The passenger car (“PC”) segment performed well during 2017 with 139,424 units sold or 4.7 percent increase from 2016 total sales of 133,188 units. For December 2017, PC segment reached 14,182 units sold with 13.4 percent rise over 12,510 in December 2016.

Categories in Commercial Vehicles (“CV”) segment also increased in whole 2017 with a combined total of 286,249 or collective growth of 26.4 percent over 226,384units sold in December 2016. CV sales in December 2017 alone reached 31,312 or 45 percent surge over 21,594 units in December 2016.

Notably, sales of light commercial vehicles soared 64.6 percent in December 2017 from 14,241 units in December 2016 while light trucks (Category 4) also went up 61.5 percent in December 2017 to 415 units from 257 in December 2016. Sales of trucks and buses (Category 5) posted the highest growth of 109.9 percent with total sales of 298 units from only 142 units December 2016.

“We ended 2017 with a positive note. Aggressive promos, new model updates and the hard work of members helped contribute to expanding the Philippine market. While exceeding our sales target for the year, we remain cautious in our projection for 2018. CAMPI remains confident that the market will be able to adjust to the new auto excise tax in 2018,” said Gutierrez.

Toyota Motor Philippines Corporation remained the top performer with 43.20 percent market share having sold 183,908 units. Mitsubishi Motor Philippines Corporation followed with 17.29 percent share with 73,590 units. Stable at third was Ford Motor Company with 8.6 percent market share with sales of 36,623 units. Honda Cars Philippines, Inc. finished fourth with 7.46 percent for 31,758 units. At fifth was Isuzu Philippines Corp. with 7.07 percent market share for total sales of 30,086 units. (BCM)