Over 17m automobiles sold in China since beginning of the year

According to the latest statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, total Chinese automobile production and sales numbers for the first nine months of the year exceeded 17 million units, Xinhua reported today. A total of 17.22 million automobiles were manufactured and 17.01 million sold over the period of time from January to September; those two figures represent respective year-on-year growth rates of 8.1 percent and 7 percent. While growth has slowed down from last year, it has improved from August's figures.

According to the statistics, a total of 2.01 million automobiles were manufactured and 1.98 million automobiles sold in September; those two figures represent year-on-year growth of 4.18 percent and 2.47 percent, respectively. This is the lowest production and sales growth rates have been all year. The fall in growth rates has been attributed to the declining performance of the commercial vehicle segment; total production and sales figures for commercial vehicles totaled 282,700 and 287,600 units, down 19.29 percent and 16.01 percent from last year's figures, respectively.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics' China Economic Monitoring and Analysis Center, the automotive industry's performance indicators for the third quarter of the year are slightly behind of those of previous quarters. This decline in performance has been attributed to shrinking production and sales volumes, decreasing growth of auto part exports and increasing inventory pressures. However, taken as a whole the automotive industry is still very healthy.

In CAAM Secretary General Dong Yang's eyes, falling growth rates in the automotive industry are related to the state of the economy as a whole. Mr. Dong also pointed out that there is still a large gap for China to cross before reaching the 400 automobiles for every 1,000 residents ratio seen in major developed economies. He believes there is still quite a lot of development potential for the Chinese automotive market.

Worth pointing out is that September marked the first month in over a year that own brands' share of the passenger automobile market increased. A total of 653,600 own brand passenger automobiles were sold over the course of the month, making up 38.54 percent of all passenger automobile sales, up 1.41 percent from figures from August.