Executive summary
- New vehicle sales declined to 677 vehicles for July 2022 from 872 vehicles sold in June 2022. See figure 1.
- A decline in new vehicle sales for July 2022 was mainly driven by low sales of extra heavy vehicles, heavy commercial vehicles, and light commercial vehicles
- Extra heavy vehicle sales declined by 76% when compared to June 2022
- Heavy commercial vehicle sales declined by 50% in relation to June 2022
- New light commercial vehicle sales declined by 29% when compared to June 2022
- A total 10394 of vehicles were sold between July 2021 and July 2022
Analysis
- On an annual basis, new vehicle sales declined by 15.4%, (See figure 2). This is could be influenced an increase in interest rates which resulted in low demand for credit to buy new vehicles
- Extra heavy vehicle sales declined to 9 from 37 vehicles sold in June 2022
- Heavy commercial vehicle sales declined to 6 from 12 vehicles sold in June 2022
- Light commercial vehicle sales declined to 266 from 376 vehicles sold in June 2022. This could have resulted from poor performance in commercial operations.
Figure 1: Monthly Vehicle Sales (July 2021 – July 2022), Namibia
Figure 2: Year on Year, Vehicle sales growth (July 2021- July 2022), Namibia
Outlook
- The current interest rate hike cycle influences the demand for credit for both households and businesses. This speaks to the overall affordability of credit to purchase new vehicles and the tightening of overall general spending in the market. We project new vehicle sales momentum for August 2022 to decline further.