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.