China’s car sales reportedly climbed 7.4% in August from a year ago, showing some signs of life as buyers scared off by a nationwide clampdown on auto loans trickled back into showrooms, official data showed.
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Reuters said that that was still well off the pace of last year and earlier in 2004, indicating persistent nervousness over Beijing’s efforts to curb easy loans to prevent a rash of new bad loans from forming.
Car sales climbed 3.7% in July year on year, after rising 4.8% in June and 21% in May.
Sales of sedans crept up 0.2% to 170,300 in August from July, as the world’s No. 4 vehicle market continued to feel the impact of credit curbs, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in a report seen by Reuters.
Analysts reportedly say car sales this year may grow just 10-20% compared with 2003, when sales almost doubled to about 2 million.
A total of 1.506 million cars were sold in China from January to August, up 23.68% from a year earlier, the association said on its website.
Reuters noted that growth in sedan sales in China has decelerated since April when Beijing slapped curbs on credit, afraid that over-investment in pockets of the economy could generate more bad loans.
