Car, truck sales declined by 7% in February

Car and truck manufacturers saw their volume sales decline by around 7 percent last February from the same month a year ago, but the industry hopes to see better numbers as quarantine restrictions continue to ease.

Automakers sold a total of 24,304 units last February, a 7.3-percent decline year-on-year, according to a joint report by the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines, Inc. (Campi) and Truck Manufacturers Association (TMA) on Thursday.

However, Campi and TMA, which account for the bulk of the auto industry, underscored that their performance last February was a 17-percent improvement from their sales last January, when they sold 20,765 units.

Combined, total sales for the first two months reached 45,069 units, marking a 9.2-percent decline from the comparative period in 2021. The month-on-month growth, however, gave them a reason to be optimistic.

“The February 2022 sales have regained a double-digit growth amid the improved consumer confidence as the country has shifted to ‘low-risk’ for COVID-19 classification, according to the government report — a welcome development for the industry,” said Campi President Rommel Gutierrez in a statement.

Overall, Campi and TMA sold a total of 268,488 units last year, a 20-percent increase from 2020. While this reversed the 39.5-percent drop in sales in the first year of the pandemic, the performance last year was still not fast enough to match the 2019 sales of 369,941 units.

“The industry is anticipating to see a continued recovery this month as the economy further reopens, downgrading to the least restrictive alert level 1 in major areas including the National Capital Region starting this month,” he said.

“As the economy reopens, the safety and health of the public is paramount to prevent another wave of virus infections and cause disruption anew to the recovery of the industry, which targets to sell 336,000 units this year — a 17 percent increase from the actual volume last year,” Gutierrez, who is also a top official of market leader Toyota, added.

Toyota Motors Philippines Corp. cornered 49.08 percent of total sales since the start of the year, followed by Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corp., which had a market share of 14.33 percent, and then by Nissan Philippines, Inc., which had 7.85 percent.