Thailand's new vehicle market continued to decline in October, by 11.3% to 77,121 units from strong year earlier sales of 86,931 units, according to wholesale data compiled by the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI).

This was the fifth consecutive monthly decline after more than two years of strong growth and reflects a sharp slowdown in economic growth.

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GDP growth was up 2.4% year on year in the third quarter, down from 2.5% in the first half of the year and 4.1% in the whole of 2018, which has hurt consumer and business sentiment.

The market had also been held back by stricter car loan criteria introduced by banks earlier this year which resulted in a significant rise in rejections – especially among small car buyers.

Overall passenger car sales fell 7.6% to 30,327 units last month while pickup based vehicle sales were down 14.8% to 37,357 units and SUVs declined by 10.5% to 5,439 units.

Sales of commercial vehicles other than pickup trucks were down by 5.3% to 3,998 units.

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Toyota sales declined by 8.2% to 26,619 units in October, according to separate industry sources, while Isuzu volume fell 12.1% to 11,860 units; Honda booked 9,709 (-11.6%); Mitsubishi Motors 7,058 (+5.1%); Nissan 4,855 (-23.3%); Mazda 3,783 (-33.0%); and Ford 3,522 (-31.3%).

Total vehicle sales in the first 10 months of the year were up by just 0.6% at 838,968 units, compared with 833,515 last year, with the strong gains made in the first half of the year now almost entirely wiped out.

The federation expected the market to continue to weaken in the fourth quarter but still predicts full year sales to exceed 1m in 2019.

Exports fell by 8.3% to 85,552 vehicles in October and were down by 4.8% at 906,653 in the first 10 months of the year.

Vehicle production fell 22% to 152,787 units last month and by over 2% to 1.72m year to date.

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