Campi jacks up ’12 sales goal

The Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines (Campi) said Thursday its members collectively posted a 7 percent growth year on year in sales for both passenger and commercial vehicles for the January-July period, prompting the industry group to raise its sales forecast for 2012.

“Riding high on the back of the auto industry’s strong performance in sales in the past months, Campi is revising its total industry sales forecast for the year to 185,000 units,” Campi president Rommel Gutierrez said in a statement.

The original target set for 2012 was 180,000 units.

Campi data showed that total sales reached 87,377 units so far this year from 81,286 units in the same period last year.

On a year-to-date basis, Japanese vehicles led the industry, Campi said.

Toyota Motor Philippines continues to lead the industry with a 40.8 percent market share, followed by Mitsubishi’s 23.2 percent and Honda’s 8.2 percent, according to industry data.

There were 14,503 units sold in July 2012 alone, 26 percent up from 11,504 units in July 2011, Campi said.

“Campi’s performance during the month for July has shown that the local automotive industry has fully recovered from the supply limitation that was brought about by the flooding in Thailand last year,” Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez attributed this to the industry’s ability to quickly recover in order to serve customer’s demands, “several strong economic indicators,” as well as the influx of numerous new model introductions during the first semester of the year.

According to Campi, the group’s performance significantly improved in the first half of the year, during which time manufacturers showed signs of recovery from the limitations of supply due to last year’s floods in Thailand.

As for July, the sales figures showed the industry has recovered enough to cater to the growing demand for vehicles this year.

“Moreover, July has always been a seasonally high month in terms of sales for the automotive industry and this was reflected by this month’s figures once again.