“It is still too early to draw a conclusion about a positive trend of the auto market in January, considering the official data about deliveries have not been released yet,” said Brent Valmar, general manager of Porsche Romania and vice-president of the Automotive Manufacturers and Importers Association (APIA).
“According to our analysis, there cannot be any more than 4,000 units.” Even with 4,000 cars sold in January, the figure would still be almost 30% higher than in January 2013.
The increase in the number of cars registered in January comes after a positive second half of 2013, when all months beat sales figures of the corresponding period of 2012.
“The explanation for the more than 5,100 registrations is that some of the deliveries in November and December were recorded in the January statistics, “ Valmar said.
APIA’s vice-president said it is a good thing the auto market appears to be stabilizing. Traffic in dealers’ showrooms was low in January, partly because of the weather and of the rise in sales in December, Valmar added.
Registrations of second-hand cars dropped 14% in January compared with the year-ago period to almost 15,500 units, according to the data of the Driver License and Vehicle Registration Department (DRPCIV). However, imports are three times higher than new car registrations.
“The risk of a massive inflow of clunkers from Western Europe remains. We still need to find the right fiscal, technical and administrative measures to encourage sales of new cars to refresh fleets and contain the harmful flow of very old cars into Romania,” Valmar said.
The key to the stabilization of the auto market this year is start of the government-backed clunkers program as soon as possible, to boost sales of cars to individuals, a segment that now accounts for merely one fifth of the market.
“We support the idea of resuming the clunkers program at the beginning of March this year and no later than that. On the other hand, we believe the program should be dropped for good after 2014,” Valmar concluded.
Romania’s auto market lost more than 77% of the sales volume in the last six years, going to a little more than 82,000 vehicles in 2013 from almost 370,000 in 2007. The decline drove more than one quarter of the national dealership network out of the business, according to APIA data.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)