China’s May vehicle sales fall 12.6%, industry body says

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China’s auto sales fell 12.6% in May from a year earlier, data showed on Friday, but the extent of the decline improved from April’s falls as authorities rolled out stimulus to support a market depressed by the country’s COVID-19 lockdowns.

Overall sales in the world’s biggest car market fell to 1.86 million vehicles in May, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) showed.

However, May sales rose 57.6% month-on-month from April, when the market was badly hit by COVID-19 lockdowns in several cities and saw sales that month almost halve year-on-year.

Sales in the first five months were 12.2% lower from the same period in 2021, CAAM said.

China’s auto sector has been hit hard in recent months by China’s efforts to combat Omicron this year, which saw the country put many parts of the country including Shanghai under stringent lockdown.

Authorities are trying various incentives to revive the market, with the latest being a halving of the purchase tax for cars priced at no more than 300,000 yuan ($45,000) and with 2.0-litre or smaller engines to 5% of the sticker price from June 1.

The move could lead to an increase of 2 million extra car sales this year, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), another industry body.

The country’s most congested cities, including Shanghai and Shenzhen, have increased car ownership quotas while local governments are also subsidising people who exchange their old combustion cars for new electric ones.

May sales of new energy vehicles, which include battery-powered electric vehicles, plug-in petrol-electric hybrids and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, rose 49.6% month-on-month.

A separate data report of from the CPCA on Thursday said that sales of passenger vehicles in May fell 17% from the same period a year ago.

CAAM tracks a broader range of sales data from manufacturers including commercial vehicles such as trucks while CPCA focuses on retail sales of passenger cars.

(Reporting by Zhang Yan and Brenda GohEditing by David Goodman and David Evans)