Imported vehicle sales keep falling in may, indicates Abeiva

SÃO PAULO-sales of imported cars of the brands without factory in Brazil returned to fall last month. This time, the retreat was 22.6% as compared to the same period in 2012. In comparison with April, there were 13.6% fall in plates issued, according to Abeiva, balance sheet entity that gathers the importing companies. In total, were sold 9.6 million imported cars in may, which brings the year-to-date volume to 44.9 thousand units, a fall of 24.9%.
As was already happening in the months before, many of the premium segment brands, such as Audi, BMW and Land Rover, had positive performance in may, however, insufficient to compensate for the decline of larger scale marks.
The Kia Motors brand that has the largest volume among the associated Abeiva had, compared to the previous year 37.5% drop in sales, with a total of 2.6 million licensed cars last month. The Korean brand chose not to enable the new automotive system and therefore do not have access to the quotas of up to 4.8 thousand vehicles free of extra charge of 30 percentage points in the tax on industrialized products (IPI).
But even the most popular brands that have already joined the new regime and have import quotas are showing negative numbers. The Chinese JAC Motors, for example, had 17.4% drop in sales in may, compared to the same period last year, to 1.4 million cars.
In more sophisticated cars and even compared to the previous year, the Audi surged from 41.6% in sales, to 429 cars, while BMW has doubled its volume totaling 1.3 thousand units. The Land Rover sales rose 25.3% to 971 units.