Auto market shrinks 45 pct in July

ISTANBUL

The combined sales of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) declined by 45.3 percent on an annual basis to 47,850 units in July, according to data from the Automotive Distributors’ Association (ODD).

It was followed by a 12.5 percent year-on-year increase in June.

The ODD reported that passenger car sales on the domestic market fell nearly 48 percent in July from a year ago to 36,300 units, which also compared unfavorably with the 62,350 passenger cars sold in June.

The LCV market saw a nearly 36 percent drop decline in sales on an annual basis to around 11,540 units.

On the back of the July data, total automotive sales in Turkey amounted to 442,550 units in the first seven months of 2021, pointing to a 29.6 percent rise from the same period of 2020.

From January to July, some 347,000 passenger cars were sold, a 27 percent increase from a year ago, while the annual rise in LCV sales was 40.1 percent to nearly 96,000 units.

The ODD data also showed that a total of 1,019 electric cars were sold in Turkey in the first seven months of the year, rising by a staggering 434 percent on an annual basis while hybrid car sales grew nearly 250 percent to 28,421.

On a related note, the automotive industry’s shipments to foreign markets stood at nearly $2 billion in July, capturing more than 12 percent share in Turkey’s overall export revenues, the latest foreign trade figures showed.

The industry’s exports, however, declined by 9.3 percent on an annual basis from last July’s $2.2 billion, according to data from the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly (TİM).

From January to July, automotive exports amounted to $16.4 billion, accounting for 13.5 percent of the country’s exports. In January-July last year, the sector’s export revenues stood at around $13 billion.

The automotive sector’s 12-month trailing export revenues were $28.9 billion, the TİM data also showed.