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.
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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.
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