China’s VIA exceeds warning threshold for 14 straight months

According to the data published by the China Automobile Dealers Association (CADA), the VIA (Vehicle Inventory Alert Index) in February was 63.6%, a month-on-month increase of 4.7 percentage points and a year-on-year growth of 11.3 percentage points, which was still above the warning line. By the end of February, China's VIA has been exceeding an official warning threshold for 14 consecutive months.

The CADA pointed out that the passenger flow in February were obviously less than that of other months due to the Spring Festival, thus led to a decrease on vehicle sales. Besides, part of dealers had liquidated their inventories before the Chinese New Year Holiday, which made them increase vehicle procurement after automakers announced their specific annual sales targets.

Aside from above reasons, automotive dealers will still suffer operational stress caused by overall depressed auto market climate, declining passenger volume, sliding sales income as well as fierce price competition, said the CADA.

According to the association's survey, vehicle dealers predict that there will be a rising market demand in March over the previous month thanks to some automobile exhibitions to be opened in part of regions this month. Meanwhile, dealers are facing increasing tasks on car handover during the final month of the first quarter.