Car sales up by 15% in September

Car sales up by 15% in September

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Sales of new vehicles increased by 15 percent from the
previous month to 34,396 units in September, thanks to plenty of
cheaper bank loans, the Association of Indonesian Automotive
Manufacturers (Gaikindo) said on Tuesday.

Gaikindo said in a statement that for the first nine months of
this year, sales rose by 11.6 percent to 268,550 units from
240,471 units in the same period last year.

Commercial vehicles accounted for 30,440 units of total sales
in September, up from 26,949 in August, while passenger car sales
edged higher by 28 percent to 3,956 units, compared with 3,103 in
August.

The country's largest car maker, PT Astra International, which
has a joint venture operation with Toyota Motor Corp. to assemble
and distribute Toyota vehicles in Indonesia, saw a 12 percent
increase in domestic sales to 13,941 units in September compared
to the previous month level.

Car sales figures are often used as a barometer of consumer
confidence.

Earlier, some analysts said the domestic car market was
expected to slow down this year, as people's purchasing power had
declined by the slow pace of economic recovery.

They predicted that domestic vehicle sales this year would
grow only slightly, to around 350,000 vehicles from 317,000 last
year; but the latest car sales figures have proven to the
contrary, as a recent fall in domestic interest rates has boosted
demand for car loans.