After 7 years of continuous decline, the car market in Romania has this year started to report growth.
According to the Association of Car Makers and Importers in Romania, in the first 9 months of 2014 car sales grew by 26.8% as compared to the same period of 2013, up to 73,600 cars. This growth is due mainly to the car sales that went up by 27%, up to 61,300 cars. However, according to the Romanian Ministry of the Interior, the number of new cars registered in the first 9 months of the year stood at 51,500.
Those developments have been commented upon for Radio Romania by journalist Adrian Mitrea: “The Romanian car market had reached such a low level that it couldn’t go down anymore. There were sales somewhat scheduled, in that old cars from certain car fleets had to be replaced by new ones. Hence the growth in sales. As regards the segment of natural-person customers, the car business is slack. It’s true that this year, the ‘Car Scrap’ program has unfolded better than last year, through the electronic allotment of tickets directly to the dealer. That was a small incentive. Therefore we are actually talking about an increase justified by the fact that we started from a very low level. We also need to make a distinction between the data concerning car sales reported by the Association of Car Makers and Importers and the data provided by the Police, referring to car registrations. On the Romanian car market there is unfortunately this strange phenomenon: cars are reported as sold by the Association, which are subsequently exported, for various reasons, so, the Association reports them as sold and consequently sales are reported as growing, but, then, from the data provided by the police, we realize that the growth was not that big, the difference being of several thousand cars. That is why, we have spectacular rises reported by the Association and only moderate growth reported by the police”.
As regards registrations of second-hand cars, they dropped by 4% in the first 9 months as against the same period of last year down to almost 160 thousand cars. Here is Adrian Mitrea again: “Practically the second-hand car market has stabilized for several months, actually for about 2 years the market has been stable at a very big volume, in that second-hand car imports continue to be very high. Of course, the import rate of second-hand cars is higher than the import rate of new cars, although everybody wants a new car. But this is the economic reality in Romania, people cannot afford to buy a new car. Also the massive imports of second-hand cars point to the fact that the car dealers in our country have not yet learnt how to trade second-hand cars. It’s only for about a year that I’ve noticed some interest in that segment, but so far it has been a totally ignored market category by dealers, which has actually been to their disadvantage. There have emerged dealers who are specialized only in second-hand cars and who do in a professional way what the dealers of new cars should have done. They have ignored that market segment and now they have to bear the consequences”.
In terms of new cars, the best selling brand is Dacia with 20,200 cars sold, followed by Volkswagen with almost 6,400 cars sold, by Skoda, Ford, Renault and Opel. As regards second-hand cars, Romanians prefer Volkswagen, Opel ad Ford cars.
In the first 9 months of the year the national production stood at 287,000 cars, by 6.7% less than in 2013, of which 244,000 cars were produced by Dacia and 43,000 by Ford. Exports totaled 266,000 cars, by 2% less in comparison with the first 9 months of 2013. The most sought-after exported model was Dacia Duster, with 114,000 cars sold followed by Dacia Logan and Ford B-Max.
The turnover in the car sector in Romania reached 16.88 billion Euros in 2013, on the rise by 26% as compared to the previous year. Dacia exported 93% of its car output and Ford exported its whole car output produced at the Craiova factory.
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