Chinese car market leader Volkswagen expects group vehicle sales in China to remain roughly stagnant in the current year, chief executive Bernd Pischetsrieder reportedly said in a television interview.
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“In absolute figures, rounded off, the 600,000-650,000 we sold in 2004 won’t change much relatively speaking,” VW’s CEO told Bloomberg TV in an interview broadcast on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The report noted that China is Volkswagen’s single largest foreign market and one that the group used to dominate until rivals began moving in waves into the world’s most dynamic car market.
Pischetsrieder reportedly also expressed confidence that extremely high steel prices that have been a bane to both carmakers and suppliers won’t last much longer.
“We’ve seen that the prices for scrap, for example, have declined again somewhat in the past weeks and that’s in a sense a leading indicator for the overall development in the steel price,” he said, according to Reuters, adding: “We have to assume that the steel price levels that we’ve had in the past will not return. And there are new steel mills going on line in the meantime, in China particularly.”
Reuters said Pischetsrieder also sent a verbal warning to European steel makers that they could lose VW’s business if they don’t relax their prices.
“They (Chinese steel mills) are already our suppliers, the question is then whether we will possibly use them to supply our European plants one day,” the VW CEO said, according to the report.
