MANILA – Automotive vehicle sales in August increased by 8.1 percent on a month-on-month basis, signaling what could be an end to sluggish sales in recent months, the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines, Inc. (CAMPI) and Truck Manufacturers Association (TMA) reported.
Vehicles sales last month rose to 30,313 units from 28,038 units sold in July this year. “Coming from a double digit decline in July, our August sales performance is an indication of improving consumer confidence,” CAMPI president Rommel Gutierrez said.
The double-digit sales in passenger car segment lifted the slower growth in commercial vehicles for August.
Member companies of CAMPI sold a total of 8,678 units of passenger cars in August 2018, up by 24.4 percent from July 2018’s sales of 6,975 units.
Passenger cars accounted for 29 percent of the market for August.
The remaining 71 percent were all commercial vehicle sales, which sold a total of 21,635 units in August, improving by 2.7 percent month-on-month.
However, on a year-on-year basis, the industry continued to post a double-digit negative growth on sales in August.
Vehicle sales last month declined by 14.1 percent compared to August 2017’s sales of 35,309 units.
Year-on-year, passenger car sales in August 2018 fell by 22.9 percent from 11,258 units in August 2017, while commercial vehicle sales went down by 10 percent from 24,051 units.
In the commercial vehicle segment, the largest drop was recorded in Asian utility vehicles, which posted a negative growth of 56.6 percent to 2,981 units in August this year from 6,864 units in 2017.
Sales of light commercial vehicles, on the other note, increased by 12 percent to 17,354 units this year from 15,499 units in August last year.
In the truck segment, light truck sales dropped 34.2 percent to 685 units; trucks and buses category IV, increased by 12.9 percent to 456 units; and trucks and buses category V, decreased by 34.6 percent to 159 units.
For the first eight months of the year, total sales of CAMPI and TMA declined by 14.3 percent to 229,941 units from 268,424 units in the same period in 2017.
Market leaders for this period were Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Ford, and Honda. (PNA)
