Alpha News
A selection of news and PR featuring Alpha clients
Romanian auto market accelerates towards 400,000 vehicles
( 04 / April / 2008 )
New car sales could rise this year high above the initial expectations of the Association of Automobile Importers and Producers (APIA) and, as such, might attain the threshold of 400,000 vehicles after, in 2007, the Romanian market exceeded the number of 300,000 new car sales.
According to the publication, the new vehicle sales increase will range in 2008 between 20 and 27%, whereas APIA vice-president Brent Valmar had declared at this year-start that 'at APIA level an increase of 5% is foreseeable and the market might even stagnate or record a decline'.
Given the answers of 18 importers, the results of the study also show that the auto service network is overloaded and therefore people must wait up to several weeks or even months to have their car repaired.
25% of importers considered the explosion of the auto market the main cause, which congealed service capacities, another 25% of importers were convinced that the lack of qualified personnel is the main reason. However, most respondents (35%) saw the labor force migration as main source of blame.
For this year, a surge of 50 – 60% is expected in SUVs sales and even 60-70% in mono-volume cars. As for the evolution of the auto market, a conservative scenario shows an overall jump of 30% in the sales of imported cars, up to 266,000 units; and an rise by 2.7 percent, up to 113,874, of local vehicle sales. The optimistic scenario, estimates a surge by 39% in the number of imported cars and 5% for the ones made locally.