The Car Market in H1 2016: Car Importers Maintain their Pessimistic View

Making the decision to buy a car is very much attached to morale and morale has been low amongst the Lebanese. The economy has been subdued for almost five years now and policy inaction makes it unlikely for the public deficit or public debt to be resorbed, for our exports to become more competitive or for our structural issues to be addressed.

Resilience has always been an act familiar to the Lebanese and that’s what drove car importers to fight for their market shares. The Lebanese car importers have engaged in aggressive marketing campaigns in the past few years and that translated into an improvement in the number of new registered cars in the First Half of 2016 (H1 2016). Figures from AIA point to a 3% year-on-year upturn in the number of newly registered commercial and passenger cars to 19,749 cars by June 2016. In details, the number of newly registered passenger cars rose from 18,047 by June 2015 to 18,444 by June 2016 and the number of newly registered commercial vehicles rose by 16.10% to 1,305 by June 2016.

However, the AIA notes that this improvement in registrations is not proportional to the advertising efforts made by the car importers. The consumer’s preference for low price-tag cars (usually below $15,000) is still dominant and is eating away at the car importers’ profits. The low sales turnover is compelling importers to advertise easy payment facilities and innovative after-sales services only to obtain a slight uptick in the registration of new cars.

To read the full report, click on the link below:

The Car Market in H1 2016 – Importers Maintain their Pessimistic View

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