Source: People's Daily

02-17-2009 08:22

China is estimated to have sold 790,000 cars in January this year, while the US sold 668,000 cars during the same month. This marks the first time that China has overtaken the US in monthly auto sales, said Mike DiGiovanni, executive director of global market and industry analysis at General Motors Corporation during GM's monthly sales meeting in the US.

"This is the first time in history that China has passed the United States in monthly sales," DiGiovanni said.

Based on January's figure of 790,000 units, China is expected to sell 10.7 million vehicles this year, he added.

China will still be unable to surpass the US in total sales volume in the auto market this year. However, China's auto market is becoming a powerful new player, according to the analysis of experts in the industry.

Governmental measures help to pick up the market

After passing the Proposals on Structure Adjustment of the Automobile Industry, China reduced the purchase tax on vehicles to stimulate consumption.

It also launched measures to encourage independent innovation and put local marketing of environment- friendly cars in its agenda.

Many auto enterprises have quickly responded by making full use of the positive opportunities provided by the proposals to start a new round of "market-making."

The Proposals on Structure Adjustment of the Automobile Industry encourage consumers to buy small-displacement cars, and at the same time greatly supports auto enterprises in developing and producing more environment-friendly products. It can be said that the proposals consider not only the need to stimulate auto consumption in the short term, but also the objective of promoting long-term healthy development in the auto industry. They will definitely produce far-reaching effects on the future development of China's auto industry, said Yao Yiming, executive vice president of Guangzhou Honda.

Jin Gebo, assistant to the board chairman of Chery Automobile Stock Holding Company, believes that the company's strategic advantages in the four areas of small-displacement vehicles, new-energy vehicles, minibuses and core vehicle parts and exports will allow Chery to fully obtain the benefits from the implementation of the Proposals on Structure Adjustment of the Automobile Industry, and will hopefully promote the sales volume of Chery automobiles to boom in the second half of 2009.

Staff in the public relations department of BYD Auto said that the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Finance have clearly declared that they will support domestic automobile enterprises in developing new-energy projects. This is big encouragement for domestic automobile enterprises. They will not only offer remarkable support for the development of new-energy automobile projects, but will also greatly improve overall development of the entire enterprise.

Since the rate of growth of vehicle sales volume noticeably slowed down in the second half of last year, many high-level executives of automobile enterprises hold almost the same attitude when talking about the trend of the vehicle market this year: cautious but optimistic.