Thailand’s new vehicle market declined for a third straight month in August, by 6.9% to 80,838 units from strong year earlier sales of 86,814 units, according to wholesale data compiled by the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI).
The recent market decline followed over two years of strong growth and reflected a sharp slowdown in GDP growth in the country to 2.3% year on year in the second quarter from 2.8% in the first quarter and 4.1% in the whole of 2018.
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Domestic consumption and investment have slowed significantly so far this year, while exports have declined.
The FTI also pointed to stricter car loan criteria banks introduced earlier this year, which has resulted in a significant rise in loan rejections, as one of the reasons behind the recent market weakness.
Federation spokesperson Surapong Paisitpatanapong said loan tightening had affected buyers of small cars particularly hard, including first time buyers.
He noted the small passenger car segment underperformed significantly in August with volume declining by over 13% year on year to 25,504 units and by 1.5% to 222,478 cars in the first eight months of the year.
Overall passenger car sales fell by 3.3% to 33,036 units last month, while pick up sales were down by 7.5% at 38,202 units and SUVs plunged 22.6% to 5,671 units.
Sales of commercial vehicles other than pickup trucks declined by 2% to 3,929 units.
Toyota’s sales were just slightly higher at 27,096 units in August, according to separate industry sources, while Isuzu sales fell by 6.4% to 12,288 units, Honda shifted 11,609 units (+2.7%); Mitsubishi Motors 7,378 (+5.1%); Nissan 5,016 (-12.5%); Mazda 4,012 (-32.2%); and Ford 3,831 (-35.3%)
Total vehicle sales in the first eight months of the year were still 4.2% higher at 685,652 compared with 657,878 in the same period of last year and the federation expects the market to rise by close to 2.5% to 1.05m over the full year.
Vehicle exports fell 20.5% to 81,549 in August and were down by 4.1% at 723,561 YTD while production fell 8.2% to 166,361 last month and by 1.3% to 1.4m YTD.
