Thailand's new vehicle market continued to decline sharply in December 2019, by over 21% to 89,285 units from 113,581 in the same month of the previous year, according to wholesale data compiled by the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI).
This was the seventh consecutive monthly decline for the market after more than two years of strong growth, due to a sharp slowdown in economic growth in the country last year. GDP growth slowed to an estimated 2.5% last year from 4.1% in 2018, reflecting declining exports and sluggish household consumption.
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The vehicle market has also been held back by stricter car loan criteria by banks since the beginning of last year which has resulted in a significant rise in loan rejections especially among small cars buyers and small business owners.
Federation spokesperson Surapong Paisitpatanapong last month said financial institutions remain concerned about the high level of household debt in the country.
The vehicle market in December was driven lower by a more than 23% drop in sales of pickup based vehicles to 45,205 units, according to a separate data source, while sales of passenger cars dropped by 18.7% to 32,766 units and SUV sales declined by almost 21% to 7,198 units.
Sales of commercial vehicles, excluding pickup-based vehicles, plunged by 24.4% to 4,116 units.
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By GlobalDataToyota sales declined by 5.2% last month to 29,447 units while Isuzu sales were down by 20.8% at 15,767 units, Honda 9,537 units (-28.2%); Mitsubishi Motors 7,351 units (-20.8%); Mazda 4,630 units (-35.0%); Nissan 4,842 (-41.4%); and Ford 4,603 (-22.1%).
Over the full year, total vehicle sales declined by 3.3% to 1,007,552 units from 1,041,739 units in 2018, with strong first half gains wiped out by a sharp second half decline.
This was the first annual decline in three years.
The federation expects the local vehicle market to weaken slightly in 2020 with total industry volumes to amount to around 1m units although some manufacturers are far more pessimistic.
Toyota expects its own sales to decline by 6.7% to 310,000 units this year from 332,380 units in 2019 and forecast the total market to decline at a similar rate to around 940,000 units.
Vehicle exports declined by 7.6% to 1.054m units in 2019 which helped drive total vehicle production lower by 7.1% to 2.014m units.
The FTI expects vehicle exports to weaken moderately to around 1m units in 2020, citing continued global trade and economic uncertainty, while it expects overall production to amount to around 2m vehicles.
