When February coincides with Brazil’s Mardi Gras holiday, as it did this year, sales aren’t usually good.
In fact, just 235,000 light and commercial vehicles were sold, a 24% fall versus January. For the first two months of 2013, however, sales reached 547,000 units, an all-time record and up 5.6% year on year.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
So the auto ndustry has decided to step up production and the surge came mainly from trucks and buses. Last year, the heavyweights were hit severely by higher prices sparked by a mandatory upgrade to Euro 5 emissions compliance (hiking stickers up to 15%). A large stockpile of Euro 3 models supported sales, pushing production down.
This year, to restore inventory, heavyweight production climbed 75% year on year in the first two months to 33.000 units. Cars and light commercial output also grew a hefty 16% to 476,000 vehicles, to an industry total of a shade over half a million (509,000).
The pace of production saw industry and dealer inventories jump from 29 to 39 days’ supply in February versus January. This strategy took into account March being a strong selling month due to more working days.
In addition, the second increase to IPI [consumption] tax kicks in on 1 April after the last one on 1 January. Buyers wanting to dodge the consequent price hikes are expected at dealers all this month.
