Although car sales in Indonesia rose by 9.9% month-on-month in November, a market analyst has told just-auto that the market faces a slow recovery in 2021.
Bakar Sadik Agwan, Senior Automotive Consulting Analyst at GlobalData, blames a troubled economic environment and high incidence of COVID-19 cases.
The market has picked up this year and the year-on-year sales position has been improving, though still way lower than pre-crisis.
"Economic activity has picked up and some pent-up demand for new vehicles has come through," says Agwan. "Furthermore, measures by government to increase public consumption and boost economy such as the National Economic Recovery (PEN) Program have also positively impacted car sales.
"However, Indonesia automotive sales are highly likely to remain dwindled due to increasing COVID-19 cases and declining consumer spending.
"December will be a key month. However, even with attractive discounts and year-end promotions by OEMs, 2020 full-year retail sales are expected to remain far below the Association of Indonesian Automotive Manufacturers' (Gaikindo) revised sales projection of 600,000 announced earlier this year. A slow pace of recovery is in prospect for the early part of 2021."
