The sale of passenger cars in the Basque Country grew by more than 16% in August

2023-09-01 13:47:45

After the fall experienced in July, which broke the accumulated trend since the beginning of the year, the sale of passenger cars in the Basque Country returned to the path of improvement in August. During the past month, 1,547 vehicles were registered in the Basque Country, which represents an increase of 16.7% compared to last year, although it is still a long way from the data prior to the pandemic. Compared to the same month of 2019, the data represents 39% less (then it reached 2,552 vehicles).

The improvement experienced this summer in the Basque Country exceeds the average behavior at the level of the entire country. According to the report by the employers’ associations Anfac (manufacturers), Faconauto (dealers) and Ganvam (distributors), the registration of passenger cars and SUVs in Spain grew by 7.8% with 55,957 units, thanks to the boost in sales to individuals and companies, whose sales grew by 19.5 and 5.7% respectively. In this case, it is already the eighth consecutive month of improvement. For its part, the rental market fell by 39.2%, something that the sector attributes to the advancement of these operations in the period prior to the tourist campaign.

Since January, the sale of passenger cars in the Basque Country now totals 15,634 units, which represents results that are 11.63% better than those of 2022. The growth in this case is, yes, well below the national evolution, where the accumulated it grows 20.5% over the figures for 2022, with a total of 642,580 vehicles sold. Of course, these figures are still far from what was achieved at this time of the year in the days before the pandemic. Specifically, it represents 27% less than for August 2019. In the employers’ associations, in any case, they highlighted the evident improvement that it represents compared to the last year, when only 814,000 passenger cars were sold.

Plan Renove

The president of the Bizkaia Dealership Association, Jon Lekue, highlighted that despite the increase compared to last year, the summer data continues to be weak and remains 40% below what was seen in 2019. Bear in mind that many registrations that we have made now come from previous months and the reality is that the influx of people who go to dealerships has been reduced by around 10%, ”he warned. To boost the sector, he defends the suitability of “recovering a Scrap Renewal plan that allows the most polluting and least safe vehicles to be taken off the road”, while boosting sales.

For his part, the director of communication and marketing of Anfac, Félix García, celebrated the “positive closing” of last month, “although its volume is not high as it is a holiday month par excellence”, he stated, and recalled that at a general level In Spain, every month of the year, the figures for 2022 have been exceeded. Of course, “let us not forget that the market is still 25% below 2019,” he remarked, to later add that “the market is growing as much as year to date at a double-digit rate, but in recent months the growth has been lower”, which leads them to state that “inflation, high interest rates and uncertainty due to the lack of government can slow down the purchases in the last quarter of the year,” he added. This would jeopardize the possibility of meeting the forecast of 950,000 units. “With a market below one million units, it is difficult to renew the mobile fleet that is over 14 years old,” he added.

Raúl Morales, communication director of Faconauto, has celebrated the good performance of the private channel that has represented half of the sales, although it has done so “to the detriment of that of the companies and vehicle rental companies, which had been driving the market in our country but that in August they have behaved worse, even falling ». He has also reviewed in a special way the evolution of the electricity sector, where registrations grow by 150%, although half of these correspond to companies. “The pending issue in our country is for individuals to buy more electric vehicles and that is why it seems essential to us that there be a continuity of the Moves plan,” he warned, and recalled that the third of these programs ends on December 31.

Finally, the communication director of Ganvam, Tania Puche, has valued “the positive sign” that represents the behavior of registrations, although without “losing sight” of the difference that still remains with respect to 2019. “In In general terms, August is usually a month with lower sales due to the holiday period and this also explains why rental companies have slowed down their purchases”, he reasoned. She has trusted that the rise will continue in the coming months, and has relied on the stability of the central government to undertake “the necessary measures to recover a market that in 2023 will close below one million units.”