China imports over 93000 automobiles in July

China imported a total of 95,346 vehicles last month, the Beijing Morning Post reported on August 21. The figure, which comes from China Automobile Trading latest report, represents year-on-year growth of 21.3 percent for the country's import market. A total of 684,000 vehicles have been imported from January to July.

Passenger automobile imports last month totaled 93,062 units, 22.2 percent more than the amount imported the month before. SUV sales were a major contributor to the growth rate. The 54,000 SUVs imported constituted 58.1 percent of all imported automobiles in July, a far greater ratio than it did in the first two quarters of the year.

BMW remained the most imported brand in July, having accumulated over 10,000 import sales, followed by VW and Lexus. Mercedes-Benz fell down to number five in the rankings.

"Looking at retail sales [of imports] from 19 brands, it appears that growth rates on the whole are gradually slowing down, with the growth rate of the overall import vehicle market [over the first seven months of the year] finishing at 21.3 percent, Wang Cun, head of CATC's marketing and sales division, noted. Mr. Wang believes that final growth rates for imported vehicles this year will be around 20 percent.

In order to deal with decreasing sales growth, manufacturers have begun introducing several new promotional offers for imports. These promotions totaled 74,228 yuan ($11,714) last month, 5,454 yuan ($860.71) more than the previous month.