The Association of Car Importers in Lebanon (denoted as AIA) recently shared its automotive report in which it explains that “ As a result of the dramatic Beirut Port Explosion on 4/8/2020, the damages that importers of new cars incurred in the properties are estimated at tens of millions of dollars which will lead to the closing down of a number of companies and to the licensing of a large number of their employees and workers”.
In details, the number of newly registered commercial and passenger cars registered slumped by 71% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 4,933 cars by July 2020. This drop in the number of registered cars was mainly due to the 71.33% yearly fall in the number of newly registered passenger cars to 4,622 and the 64% decline in newly registered commercial vehicles to 311 by July 2020.
The report also showcases the consequent drop in taxes paid by the Car Importer companies. These fell from $265M in 2018 to around $33M in 2020 paid to the State treasury.
It is worthy to note that the AIA refrained from sharing detailed statistics on the sales of cars, but emphasized the above clarifications regarding the industry.
Source: AIA, BlomInvest Bank