Executive summary
- New vehicle sales declined to 1018 vehicles for September 2022 from 1051 vehicles sold in August 2022. See figure 1.
- The drop in new vehicle sales for September 2022 was mainly driven by low sales of light commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles
- New light commercial vehicle sales declined by 4% in relation to vehicles sold in August 2022
- Passenger vehicles sales declined by 3% when compared to August 2022
- A total of 10899 vehicles were sold between September 2021 and September 2022 an improvement from 10045 vehicles sold between September 2020 and September 2021
Analysis
- On an annual basis, new vehicle sales increased by 32.7% (See figure 2). This could have been influenced by an upturn in demand as consumer confidence is slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels
- Light commercial vehicle sales declined to 448 from 465 vehicles in September 2022. This could have been attributed to poor performance in light commercial activities
- Passenger vehicle sales decreased to 505 from 519. The decline could have resulted from a lack of consumer confidence to take up credit to purchase new vehicles due to the high cost of borrowing
- Extra heavy commercial vehicle sales declined to 28 from 33 vehicles sold in August 2022 as a consequence of low demand for heavy transportation services
Figure 1: Monthly Vehicle Sales (September 2021 – September 2022), Namibia
Figure 2: Year-on-Year, Vehicle sales growth (July 2021- July 2022), Namibia
Outlook
- The current monetary policy tightening has negatively influenced the demand for credit for both households and businesses. With banks having turned cautious over their vehicle financing, we expect new vehicle sales momentum for October 2022 to drop further.