Johannesburg - Supply disruptions, exacerbated by the ongoing strike in the car carrier sector, a slowing economy and moderation in consumer demand dented new vehicle sales last month.
Figures released yesterday revealed that new car sales fell 5.9 percent to 34 267 units last month from the 36 431 units sold in November last year.
Sales of new light commercial vehicles, bakkies and mini-buses declined year on year by 4.3 percent to 13 719 units, but sales of medium commercial vehicles rose by almost 13 percent to 1 003 units and heavy trucks and buses by 12.5 percent to 1 817 units.
Nico Vermeulen, the executive director of the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA, said the car rental industry had once again contributed positively to last month’s sales numbers and accounted for 12 percent of new cars sold during the month.
Vermeulen said the continuing strength in sales of trucks was indicative of spending on infrastructure-related projects and suggested some improvement in capital investment trends.
Rudolf Mahoney, the head of research at WesBank, said that the decline in the overall market was attributed to stock supply issues.
Mahoney said consumer demand, as measured by the number of applications received, remained very strong with a 1 percent growth in applications compared with November last year.
“Demand continues to grow off an already high base, confirming the decline in the market can mainly be attributed to stock constraints.”
Mahoney said stock supply constraints would most likely also affect this month’s sales and sales for the full year would be softer than the industry had predicted earlier in the year.
Sydney Soundy, the head of vehicle and asset finance at Standard Bank, said this year might end up as the third best year for domestic sales but this meant the baseline from which to project growth next year was fairly high.
Soundy added that growth in new vehicles sales next year as a result was likely to be muted at between 2 percent and 3 percent.
He said factors that would inhibit growth next year included the low level of economic growth, high levels of unemployment, rising inflationary pressure, exchange rate fluctuations, the fact that the creditworthiness of consumers was not improving and the replacement cycle might be reaching its peak.
Soundy said factors that pointed to growth next year included the favourable interest rate environment for financing of vehicles, new vehicle price inflation that was lower than consumer inflation and new model introductions.
Exports of locally produced vehicles dropped by almost 5 percent last month to 27 154 units from 28 520 in November last year.
Vermeulen attributed this to the lagged effects of the motor industry strike in September and October and current disruptions experienced by some exporters because of the ongoing industrial action in the car carrier industry.
He said total vehicle exports this year were expected to come in at about 281 000 vehicles compared with the 278 000 vehicles exported last year.
But Vermeulen said the momentum of vehicle exports was expected to improve next year as export programmes were ramped up, with exports of light commercial vehicles in particular expected to increase substantially in the new year. - Business Report