Kia Motor Philippines said it expects automotive sales to reach 275,000 units across all brands and models this year on the back of sales rebound in the fourth quarter.
Manny Aligada, president of Kia Motor Philippines, said the company decided to maintain the aggressive sales projection for the industry on the road to recovery from COVID-19, with the turnaround expected to happen by the fourth quarter.
“Our forecast for the industry this year is a more aggressive 275,000 unit sales. We are confident that the industry will recover at 275,000 [units] by the end of this year. This is about 35-percent drop from 420,000 outlook for this year and about the same percentage over the 470,000 sales last year,” Aligada said in a virtual round table discussion on Thursday.
Before the lockdown, the industry was hitting more than 30,000 units in sales every month. Kia expects to sell 4,000 units or about 1.2 percent of the projected industry sales for the year.
Aligada said there was already a pickup in demand in May. “And then in June, and the forecast for July onwards are towards close to normal levels to end of the year in Q4,” he said.
“Why do we have aggressive forecast? One, we believe that the Filipino is resilient people, used to adapting to crisis. Businessmen are used to recreating themselves, and making sure that they survive, whatever challenges face them. So it’s the Filipino grip that we are banking on and that we are confident on that normalcy will be achieved soon,” he said.
Meanwhile, local vehicle production fell 26.8 percent in the first five months to 23,781 units from 32,484 units in the same period last year, reflecting the impact of the health crisis.
Data published by the ASEAN Automotive Federation showed that the declining trend started in March 2020 as local capacity was reduced by 36 percent to 4,405 units from 6,888 units a year ago.
Production stopped in April without any output in comparison with April 2019 production of 5,975 units. The output in May improved to 1,216 units, but was still down by 84.1 percent from 7,662 units a year ago.
Total vehicle sales declined 52 percent in the first five months to 69,463 units from 142,185 units delivered in the same period last year.
Production of motorcycles and scooters also suffered a 57.5-percent contraction to 211,916 units in the five-month period from 498,177 units a year earlier.