New car sales last month rose 13.2 percent from the previous month to 35,512 units, as buying picked up after Ghost Month, according to data compiled by local motor vehicle branches last week.
Last month’s figures edged down 0.8 percent year-on-year, which car distributors attributed to a relatively higher comparison base last year.
Consumers in Taiwan tend not to buy big ticket items like homes and cars during Ghost Month, which was from Aug. 22 to Sept. 19 this year.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which maintained its position as the nation’s top seller last month, posted sales of 9,427 units, up 29.7 percent from the previous month.
Hotai, which distributes Toyota and Lexus vehicles in Taiwan, held a 26.5 percent market share last month, the data showed.
Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產), which sells Nissan and Infiniti vehicles, overtook China Motor Corp (CMC, 中華汽車) as the nation’s No. 2 car brand last month with sales of 3,569 units, a 52.2 percent surge on a monthly basis.
CMC, which builds Mitsubishi sedans and its own-brand CMC commercial models, posted a monthly sales increase of 6.53 percent to 3,459 units last month.
Yulon Nissan and CMC secured market shares of 10.1 percent and 9.7 percent respectively.
Honda Taiwan Co (台灣本田) ranked as the fourth-biggest car supplier with sales of 3,016 units and a 8.5 percent market share, followed by Mazda Motor Taiwan (台灣馬自達) and Mercedes-Benz Taiwan (台灣賓士).
From January through last month, total new car sales reached 362,016 units in Taiwan, edging up 0.7 percent from the same period last year.
Regarding the final two months of the year, car dealers said that market sentiment is likely to improve due to large-scale promotions spurring demand ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.
Hotai forecast that 430,000 new cars would be sold in Taiwan for the whole of this year, down slightly from last year’s 439,629, as the effect of the government’s stimulus program might diminish this year.
Meanwhile, the impact of Ghost Month still weighed down the nation’s housing market last month, as transactions of residential and commercial property in the six major cities fell more than 10 percent from a month earlier, according to government statistics released on Wednesday last week.
Transactions of homes, shops and offices in the six special municipalities — Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung — fell 12 percent from a month earlier to 15,154 units. On an annual basis, the figure was down about 3 percent.
Transactions fell in all six cities, with Taichung seeing the steepest monthly decline of 18 percent to 2,704 units.
Taichung’s unit sales were also down 9 percent from a year earlier.
New Taipei City saw property transactions fall 15 percent, the second-steepest decline, to 4,088 units. That was followed by a 14 percent month-on-month decline in Taipei to 1,683 units.
In Taoyuan, transactions fell 8 percent from a month earlier to 2,705 units, while deals in both Tainan and Kaohsiung fell 6 percent to 1,471 units and 2,503 units respectively.
In the first 10 months, property transactions in the six special municipalities totaled 165,797 units, up 13.4 percent from a year earlier.
Additional reporting by CNA
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