Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp, China’s second largest car maker, said on Tuesday that car sales and output in the first nine months of 2003 had leapt 41.7% as demand surged in the world’s fastest-growing saloon market, Reuters reported.
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The Shanghai-based firm sold and made 419,000 cars from January to September, already overtaking sales of 410,000 throughout the whole of 2002, the report said, putting the the company, an equal partner in China with General Motors and Volkswagen, firmly on track to exceed an annual production goal of 500,000 cars.
Sales of all types of vehicles, including cars, were up 36% to 551,400 units in the first nine months of 2003 compared with the same period of last year, the news agency said.
“Development over the past two years has caught a lot of people off guard,” Shanghai Automotive spokesman Xue Hao told Reuters, declining to give a new sales target for the year.
The news agency noted that car sales in China broke the million mark for the first time last year and are expected to rack up another stellar year in 2003, driven by strong economic growth.
Foreign car makers have announced plans to more than double production over the next four years, raising fears of a margin-sapping glut, but they hope economic growth of 8% a year will soak up additional capacity, Reuters added.
SAIC’s main venture with GM posted the fastest rise in sales among its operations in the first nine months, Xue reportedly said, up 62.2% to 133,000 units compared with the same period of 2002.
“Demand for GM’s cars is exceeding supply,” Xue told Reuters.
Reuters said Shanghai Automotive’s venture with Volkswagen saw sales go up 33.7% to 286,000 and noted that the German firm, which runs another joint venture with First Automotive Works in the northeastern city of Changchun, is China’s leader, with more than a third of the market.
SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile, in which Shanghai Automotive owns a 50.1% stake and GM 34%, sold 129,600 units in the January to September period, Reuters said, up 20% from the same period of 2002.
Shanghai Automotive expects turnover of 150 billion yuan ($18.12 billion) to 156 billion yuan this year, company executives have said, according to Reuters, which noted that revenue rose 22.4% to 120 billion yuan in 2002.
