Hyundai Asia Resources, Inc. (HARI), the official distributor of Hyundai vehicles in the country started 2019 with a slight dip in January sales, proving that the economic havoc brought about by the new vehicle excise tax is far from over.
HARI sold a total of 2,758 vehicles for the first month of 2019, a decrease of 5 percent year-on-year and 6.7 percent month-on-month.
Last month, the Passenger Car or PC segment was hit pretty hard and declined 29.1 percent from 2,036 units sold in January 2018 to 1,443 units in 2019. However, HARI attributes this to a transitionary phase and says PC sales will pickup once more with the introduction of its 2019 Accent and Reina.
Meanwhile, Commercial Vehicle or CV sales continue to grow. Last month, HARI reported a 51.7 percent increase in sales from 867 units in January 2017 to 1,315 units in January 2018. This is due to the continued popularity of the Kona and heightened demand for the H-100.
The drop in sales hasn’t affected HARI’s optimism towards the end of the year. Together with a positive economic outlook, the Korean carmaker is aiming to release new models into the country to boost demand to carry them forward in 2019.
The reasons why their sales were slow last 2018? Because HARI always removing features from models and always putting the price higher, meaning how could anybody buy these stripped off base model-like models then slapping the price tag higher? Hopefully someday Ayala should also take over Hyundai Philippines.
ReplyDeleteEveryone had slow sales in 2018 due to TRAIN, except for Nissan and Suzuki. In fact, Nissan is the only one that grew double digits.
DeleteBoth of you are right. Every car company had a slow sale last year except for Suzuki and Nissan. However it is also a fact of the matter that Hyundai sells stripped down versions of the actual cars here in the Philippines with a higher price tag. Well hopefully HARI could adjust a little bit. As a sample the Accent is even more expensive than the Veloster N when comparing their price per specs ratio considering both were affected by TRAIN and the Veloster is not even an EV.
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