Romania’s car sales reach 7-year high in January 2016

Newsroom 16/02/2016 | 16:34

Total sales of automobiles in Romania went up in January 2015 by 18.7 percent, registering the highest levels of sales in the past 7 years, while national production went down by 8.8 percent, according to a report from the Association of Producers and Importers of Automobiles (APIA), as cited by Agerpres.

In Romania, 88 percent of the automobile sales realized in January 2016 went to companies, with only 12 percent of them going to individuals. The weight of purchases made by individuals went down in January from 14 percent to 12 percent due to the effect of the “Rabla” program, says APIA.

The production of automobiles for January 2016 stood at 30,842, 8.8 percent less than in January 2015, but 9.1 percent higher than in December 2015. Of these, 26,671 were produced by Dacia and 4,171 by Ford. The highest number of units produced went to the Dacia Duster model, of which 15,192 were produced (10.2 percent more than in January 2015), followed by Ford B-MAX (4,171 units, 39.7 percent less), Dacia Sandero (4,112 units, 9.3 percent more), Dacia Logan (3,933 units, 37.5 percent less) and Dacia Logan MCV (3,434 units, 12 percent more), according to the APIA report.

As far as foreign trade is concerned, 26,963 units went to exports, a decrease of 15.2 percent compared to January 2015, but 13.4 percent more than in December 2015. The most exported model of the month was the Dacia Duster (14,473 units), the number increasing by 5.8 percent from the same time period in 2015, followed by Ford B-MAX (4,021 units, decrease of 40.5 percent).

Cars, which represent 77.4 percent of the sales recorded in January 2016, meaning 5,111 units, saw an increase of 13.8 percent, while commercial vehicles (for goods and persons) increased by 39.7 percent. The most sold brand for cars was Dacia, with 1,258 units sold, representing 24.6 percent of the total market, followed by Volkswagen with 621 units (12.2 percent).

As for car models, the most sold on the Romanian market in January 2015 was the Dacia Logan with 601 units delivered, followed by the Skoda Octavia (291 units), Dacia Sandero (189 units), Seat Leon (181 units) and Dacia Duster (157 units).

In terms of fuel, diesel vehicles continue to dominate the market with a rate of 59.4 percent, but experienced a decrease from January 2015 when they made up 67.2 percent of the market, further details the APIA report, as cited by Agerpres.

The first month of 2016 saw 39 units of hybrid or electric vehicles sold, increasing by approximately 130 percent from January 2015 when only 17 such models were sold.

Color-wise, demand focused mostly on white and grey cars, 31.1 and 23.7 percent respectively, followed by blue cars (15.8 percent) and black ones (13.7 percent).

When it comes to the country of origin of the vehicles, APIA reported that 23.8 percent are imported from Germany, 21.6 percent come from the Romanian market, 12.5 percent from the Czech Republic, 9.9 percent from Spain and 7.1 percent from France, as cited by Agerpres. Given that, the sales of vehicles from the national production went down by 15.8 percent in January 2016 compared to January 2015 while sales for imported vehicles went up by 25.9 percent.

Andreea Tint

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