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Vehicle sales slow down in April

(Agencies/China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-13 10:01

Cars come to a standstill on a street in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province. China's vehicle sales rose 14 percent in April, the slowest pace in almost two years.[China Daily]

China's vehicle sales rose 14 percent in April, the slowest pace in almost two years, as a combination of inflation and a slumping stock market curbed demand for passenger cars.

Sales of passenger cars and commercial vehicles rose to 922,600 in April, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in a statement yesterday. Vehicle sales grew at a rate of 21 percent in the first three months of the year.

The inflation rate is running near an 11-year high forcing people to pay more for food and other daily necessities. The nation's falling stock market also played a part in curbing demand for luxuries including automobiles.

"There're fundamental changes in people's buying sentiment," said Yale Zhang, director of CSM Asia in Shanghai. "People are really concerned about economic uncertainty."

Consumer prices rose 8.5 percent in April from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday, after gaining 8.3 percent in March. Earlier this month, central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said there's a possibility that interest rates will rise. The benchmark one-year lending rate is at a nine-year high of 7.47 percent after six increases last year.

Vehicle production rose 20 percent to 981,300 units last month. In the first four months, production rose 16 percent to 3.5 million vehicles, while sales increased 19 percent to 3.5 million vehicles.

Passenger car sales rose 11 percent last month, also the slowest pace since July 2006. Sales of commercial vehicles including buses and trucks rose 21 percent to 317,700 units in April.

Car sales rose 22 percent last year, helped by the nation's benchmark stock index, the CSI 300, more than doubling. At least three-fifths of Chinese stock market investors use their profits to buy new cars, the automakers' group said last year.

General Motors, Toyota and other overseas carmakers are banking on China and other emerging markets to offset slower demand in the US, the world's largest auto market.

GM, the biggest overseas automaker in China, expects to boost annual sales in the country by about half over the next three years to 500,000 vehicles, it said last month.

Toyota, the world's second largest automaker, aims to raise China sales 36 percent to 640,000 vehicles in the year ending March 2009, it said last week.

Overall vehicle sales rose 7.8 percent in July 2006, while passenger car sales increased 5.4 percent.