Sales of new cars reached 8,588 in July, compared with 8,567 in the same time last year. Auto dealers say one of the factors that made customers postpone the decision to buy a car was the discussions over the Fiscal Code and VAT.
“The auto market may have been affected by these discussions over the past few weeks. All the discussions about the Fiscal Code and VAT are not helping the auto market in any way,” said Nicolae Sorescu, sales manager of the car division of the Radacini group, which sells Opel, Citroen, Mazda, Suzuki, Honda and Volkswagen cars.
“The amount of VAT is not important to the auto market, what is important is how much deductibility the Fiscal Code allows.”
About 50% of the expenses made for the cars that are not used exclusively for business are not deductible at the moment, regardless of whether the taxpayer owns them or merely uses them. The capping of the deductibility caused a freeze on the operating leasing market, as well, in 2013. The operating leasing companies later became exempt from the 1,500 lei (EUR338) monthly deductibility cap.
The second factor, car dealers say, was the hot weather, which made customers go on holiday instead of buying a new car.
“Showroom traffic dropped because people are on vacation, as it did in July, too. The hot weather drove everybody to the mountains or the seaside on weekends so they no longer had the time to come to showrooms,” Sorescu said.
The market has grown because of companies this year, which generated 80% of the sales of new cars and because of the clunkers program, which offered more vouchers, 25,000, compared with 20,000 last year. Almost 12,000 of these vouchers had been used by the end of July, which means greater demand than in 2014. (EUR1=RON4.4412)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)