Russia’s Association of European Businesses (AEB) says January sales of new passenger cars and LCVs decreased by 5% last month, representing a slightly disappointing performance from December’s fall of just 1%.
The AEB Automobile Manufacturers Committee (AMC) had hoped December’s numbers and an overall drop of 11% for last year, was evidence of Russia “finally bottoming out,” but this month’s figures are something of a setback, albeit minor compared to more precipitous falls in the last two years.
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The Committee notes among the top ten bestselling models so far, all are locally produced, with sales falling by 4,078 sold units, amounting to 77,916 cars.
“If the market is going to grow this year, then in January it is not showing any hurry to do so,” said AEB AMC chairman, Joerg Schreiber. “After a very slow first two weeks, customer activity has been picking up visibly and consistently across the industry starting from the middle of the month.
“This suggests consumers have digested the 2017 price and product offerings and are coming to terms with the new reality.
“This is a solid basis to start from into the beginning spring season and with the recent trend continuing it should be only a matter of time until we see sales growing year-on-year.”
Full-year sales of passenger cars and light and medium commercials in 2016, reached 1.42m units, 11% below the 2015 result of 1.6m.
