VW Group supervisory board chairman Ferdinand Piech is taking an upbeat line on prospects for the company’s sales in China despite recent reports of a sharper than expected slowdown for the Chinese economy.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in China, Piech told Bloomberg that the company’s sales in China will grow at least 9% in 2013 following growth of at least 10% this year.

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“The growth is tremendous,” Piech said. “You have so many people without cars and we expect a few buyers for our products.”

China is the Volkswagen Group’s largest sales market. In 2011, Volkswagen delivered 2.26m vehicles to customers in China. In the first half of 2012, deliveries rose by 17.5% to about 1.3m units.

VW Group aims to increase its annual production capacity in China to about 4m units a year by 2018.

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