Imports of completely built-up (CBU) cars in the January-July period
have picked up 78.4 percent year-on-year to 667 million USD, a local
newspaper reported.
The Saigon Times Daily cited the General
Statistics Office (GSO) as saying that some 31,000 CBU units have been
shipped into the country in the period, up 59.8 percent from a year
earlier.
The recent report of GSO showed that in July alone,
around 6,000 cars worth 122 million USD have been imported, rising by
122 percent in volume compared to last year’s same month, the highest
monthly CBU car import in three years.
The most recent time when
imports of CBU cars surpassed the latest figures is June 2011 with 7,000
units imported but the value remained the same at 122 million USD.
The
CBU imports in the seven-month period are quite high as the auto market
in the year’s first half grew only 30 percent and the total volume of
cars assembled in the country inched up 24 percent year-on-year.
CBU imports have been accelerating in recent months.
Imports
in the first two months of this year stayed at 3,000 units each with 65
million USD recorded in January and 51 million USD in February. The
figures rose to 4,000 units in March and April with respective costs of
84 million USD and 89 million USD.
In May, the number of imported cars went up to 5,000 units worth 106 million USD.
A
representative of the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association
(VAMA) said the growth of CBU cars has been higher than that of CKD cars
since the year’s beginning. He added that auto importers and
distributors mostly import cars based on orders of their clients and the
increasing imports demonstrate the improving demand of well-to-do
customers.
According to auto traders, the high imports of CBU
cars partly result from the auto market slightly recovering after a long
time of decline as the domestic economy has turned stable and access to
bank loans has now been made easier.
Besides, the tax rate imposed on cars imported from ASEAN countries is lowered from 60 percent to 50 percent from this year.
Cars
imported from outside ASEAN countries are of luxury brands and priced
at billions of Vietnam dong, but the demand for such cars is also
rising.
Expecting the auto market to keep increasing in the
coming time, VAMA has revised up the auto consumption forecast from
120,000 to 130,000 units, higher than last year’s 110,519 units.
In
related news, VinaMazda has reduced the retail prices of the two
versions of Mazda 6, with 998 million VND for Mazda 6 2.0L (down 126
million VND) and 1.159 billion VND for the 2.5L version (down 111
million VND). In addition to these discounts, VinaMazda is offering many
valuable accessories to customers.
According to statistics of VAMA, some 210 Mazda 6 cars were sold in the year’s first half.-VNA