A strong export recovery in July has led Brazilian industry lobby group Anfavea to partially revise its forecast for 2013.
Exports of Brazilian made vehicles are now forecast to grow 20% over 2012 to 534,000 units (not including CKD kits). Earlier in the year, the forecast was a 5% slide.
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The association cited recovery in a handful of countries, especially Argentina. The recent devaluation of the real will do nothing but help sales abroad in the medium term, according to Anfavea president Luiz Moan.
Production this year has soared and there was a new record in July: 312,300 units. Year to date volume is up 15.8%, topping 2.169m. Besides exporting more, the industry has benefited from a drop in imports after the Inovar-Auto programme added taxes to boost local production and attract new automakers.
On the other hand, domestic sales will lose momentum in this second half though a lot of this can be put down to statistical effect as the same period last year was remarkably strong. Despite July’s 342.500 units (best month of the year), average daily sales slid 6.6% over June 2013 and 10.1% over July 2012.
Yet, in the year’s seven first months, 2.141m vehicles were registered in Brazil, imports included, which resulted in 2.9% growth over January-July 2012 and maintained Brazil as the world’s fourth largest market.
Anfavea, at the end of 2012, predicted 2013 sales would grow 3.5% to 4.5% and production 4.5%. On the best hypothesis, the 4m internal sales bar could even be reached.
Although these results depended mostly on GDP climbing, forecasts for that have already dropped from 3.5% to 2% according to central bank research amongst about 100 consulting firms and economists. Anfavea is to review its data again in September after looking at the latest indicators.
It is likely the body will trim sales predictions and raise those for production. Nonetheless, it will still be a record year especially for production.
