Slump in demand for pickups slows down vehicle sales in April
The sales of vehicles in Thailand fell by 6.1% year on year (YoY) in April, mainly because businesses delayed purchases to see the policies of the new government, a senior Toyota executive said on Thursday.
Supakorn Ratanawaraha, vice president of Toyota Motor Thailand Co Ltd, said auto sales of 59,530 units in April could be broke down into 20,203 sedan cars, down 1.4%, and 39,327 commercial vehicles, down 8.4%.
Commercial vehicles have green licence plates and are used for business purposes. The sales of commercial vehicles included 26,818 one-tonne pickup trucks, whose sales saw a sharp 20.3% drop YoY.
Supakorn attributed the overall picture of vehicle sales to the big drop in demand for pickups. He said businesses and people had delayed their purchases before the election, as they wanted to see the economic trends after the election.
Supakorn believes auto sales in May would continue to slow down as the economy would continue to fluctuate during the transitional period of the current and next administrations.
On Wednesday, Surapong Paisitpatanapong, vice chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) and spokesman for the FTI’s Automotive Industry Club, said the federation maintained its total auto production forecast for the year at 1.95 million units, despite a drop in output in April. The number of vehicles produced in April dropped by 0.13% YoY to 117,636 units. From January to April, auto manufacturing grew by 4.61% YoY to 624,423 units.
The top three brands in April were:
Toyota – 19,565 units, down 9.8% YoY
Isuzu – 13,336 units, down 19.6%
Honda – 6,409 unites, up 25.5%
According to Toyota, 276,603 vehicles had been sold from January to April, down 6.1% YoY.
The top three brands in sales were:
Toyota – 94,686 units, down 4.2%
Isuzu – 60,495 units, down 18.3%
Honda – 32,370 units, up 5.3%.
