Thanks to weakening consumers’ buying habits post-GST, the Malaysian Automotive Association (MAA) has revised the 2015 TIV figures from 680,000 to 670,000, a drop of 1.5%.
MAA president Datuk Aishah Ahmad said, “While the replacement of the SST with GST led to lower price levels across the board, we believe that consumer’s confidence has yet to return after relieving a period of uncertainties arising from the new consumption tax, and thus putting a break on their spending on big-ticket items.”
For the first half of this year, the TIV dropped because of disappointing sales by Proton and Toyota. Down 24.1%, Toyota managed to sell roughly 39,000 vehicles, while Proton only managed about 50,000 vehicles. Mazda, Nissan, Honda and Perodua saw a growth in sales.
“As Toyota and Proton continued a disappointing string of results, impacts were fairly softened by growth in sales for Perodua, Honda, Nissan and Mazda, with each registering growth rates for Jan-June 2015 period of +14.8%, +17.2%, +5.3% and +13.6% respectively. While losing some market share in June 2015, Perodua maintained its lion’s share of the nationals market at 34% and Honda retained its leadership of the non-nationals segment at 14% for 1HCY15,” according to MIDF Research.
Aishah added that the market is expected to progress in the second half of the year as buyers get used to the effects of GST and return to normal spending behaviours.
