Sales of imported vehicles rose 40 percent in the first four months to 20,353 units from 14,572 units in the same period last year, the Association of Vehicle Importers and Distributors Inc. said in a report Tuesday.
AVID said passenger car sales from January to April increased 16 percent to 5,328 units from 4,574 vehicles in the same period last year. Sales of light commercial vehicles also rose 44 percent to 14,314 units from 9,906 units.
The industry group said that on a month-on-month basis, April sales dipped by 13 percent to 4,496 units from 5,193 units in March. Passenger car sales slid from 1,372 units sold in March to 1,087 units in April. Suzuki remained the best seller in this segment with a total of 2,658 units, followed by Hyundai with 1,798 units.
Meanwhile, LCVs sold in April slowed 15 percent to 3,116 units from the 3676 units in March. Ford took the lead with 6,023 units sold, followed by Suzuki with 3,732 units and Hyundai with 2,069 units.
AVID said the April sales climbed 24,848 percent to 4,496 units from just 18 vehicles sold in the same month in 2020 when the country was on lockdown.
Sales of passenger cars reached 1,087 units, 15,429 percent higher than the 7 units sold in April 2020, while sales of LCVs increased to 4,203 from 18 units last year, representing an increase of 23,250-percent.
Hyundai led the commercial vehicle segment with 673-percent growth, from last year’s 92 units to 711 units sold this year.
“They say you cannot emerge from challenging times untransformed. With these encouraging figures, I say we at AVID have boldly transformed ourselves and have become even better at what we do, which is to provide our customers an end-to-end mobility experience that best suits the needs of the times,” said AVID president Ma. Fe Perez-Agudo.
