Exports drive new vehicle sales

© Tomasz Zajda – za.fotolia.com

The export market was driven mainly by the three German brands Mercedes-Benz (6,590), BMW (5,501) and Volkswagen (4,179).

With public holidays impacting on the local market, new vehicle sales of 44,503 were slightly down from the 46,016 vehicles sold in April last year. Out of the total reported industry sales of 44,503 vehicles, an estimated 38,780 units or 87.2% represented dealer sales, 6.3% constituted sales to government, 4.2% to industry corporate fleets and 2.3% represented sales to the vehicle rental industry.

Driven by incentive packages, local new car sales of 30,184 were down by 1.9% over 2014 but the used car market showed a modest increase. Domestic sales of 12,077 new light commercial vehicles, bakkies and mini buses also reflected a decline of 6.0% over last year, as did the medium and truck segments.

According to NAAMSA, vehicle exports for 2015 were on target to improve by around 25% in volume terms to a record export number of about 325,000 for this year. At this stage, NAAMSA continued to project marginal volume growth in domestic sales based on an assumption of a slight improvement in South Africa's economic growth rate, relative stability in automotive industry industrial relations, stable interest rates and unchanged credit ratings.