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Auto sales nudged up in October: Auto sales in October inched up 1.1% m-o-m to record 9.6k vehicles, up from 9.5k in September, according to figures from the Automotive Marketing Information Council (AMIC) seen by EnterpriseAM. This marks a modest rebound in monthly vehicle sales, breaking a two-month streak of declines following four months of growth between April and July.
Remember: The vehicle market witnessed a 43% m-o-m drop in March, with sales plummeting to just 4.2k vehicles — the lowest number of auto sales we’ve seen since we started keeping track in January 2019.
Growth in truck sales drove the increase: Passenger car sales registered a 2.3% m-o-m decline to 7.4k vehicles, but a 20.3% m-o-m increase in truck sales to 1.4k units and a 4.5% m-o-m increase in bus sales to 760 pushed the overall figure up.
On a yearly basis: October’s total auto sales were up 7.3% from the same time last year, driven by a 45.3 y-o-y increase in truck sales and a 6.6% y-o-y increase in passenger car sales. In the same period, bus sales fell 24.9% y-o-y.
The data paints an incomplete picture: AMIC figures come from member distributors, covering most—but not all—industry players.
The local auto market could be in store for some drastic changes in the future, however, as it seems that every couple of days there’s a new agreement to localize auto production and increase supply. In just the first ten days of this month, we heard news that that Ezz Elarab Group launched a new Volvo EV with plans to open a EV service center and Volvo showroom next year, Nissan will soon bring its third locally assembled unit to market as part of a USD 45 mn investment, Alkan Auto will bring another Chinese EV brand to market by February, and National Automotive Company will distribute Chinese Neta Auto EVs by mid-next year.
And if that’s not enough for you, we also heard this month that three tire factories, a facility for manufacturing tire production equipment, service and maintenance centers, a steel wire plant for tire reinforcement, a white carbon production facility, and a research and training center will be built in a tire manufacturing city in Ain Sokhna under a USD 360 mn project between the Arab Organization for Industrialization and an unnamed Chinese company.
