Thailand’s new vehicle market declined for a second straight month in July, albeit by just 1.1% to 81,044 units from strong year-earlier sales of 81,946 units, according to wholesale data compiled by the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI).

This follows a 2.1% fall in sales in June, the first year-on-year decline since early 2017, and a sharp slowdown in the second quarter after more than two years of strong market growth. The Thai economy has also slowed sharply this year, with annual GDP growth slowing to 2.3% in the second quarter from 2.8% in the first and 4.1% in the whole of 2018, reflecting a slowdown in domestic consumption and investment growth and declining exports.

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The FTI also pointed to stricter lending criteria by banks as one of the reasons behind the recent market weakness, as concerns continued to rise over the levels of household debt in the country.

Sales of passenger cars and pickup based vehicles last month were both 0.8% higher at 32,792 units and 38,888 units respectively; while sales of SUVs plunged by over 24% to 5,485 units; and sales of commercial vehicles other than pickup trucks rose by 6.7% to 3,879 units.

Toyota’s sales declined by 1.8% to 25,708 in July, according to separate industry sources; while Isuzu’s sales increased by 5.3% to 13,834 units; Honda 11,024 units (+5.1%); Mitsubishi Motors 7,141 units (+18.9%); Mazda 5,381 units (-15.4%); Nissan 5,008 units (-11.3%); and Ford 4,038 (-18.8%).

Vehicle sales in the first seven months of the year were still 5.9% higher at 604,814 units compared with 571, 064 units in the same period of last year and the Federation expects the market to rise by close to 2.5% to 1.05 million units over the full year.

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