Executive summary
- New vehicle sales declined to 767 vehicles for May 2022 from 905 vehicles sold in April 2022. See figure 1.
- A decline in new vehicle sales for May 2022 was mainly driven by low sales of light commercial vehicles, passenger vehicles, and medium commercial vehicle sales
- New Light commercial vehicle sales declined 21% when compared to April 2022
- Passenger vehicle sales declined by 13% in relation to April 2022
- Extra-heavy commercial vehicles increased by 70% when compared to the previous month.
- A total of 4314 vehicles were sold during the first 5 months of the year 2022.
Analysis
- On an annual basis, new vehicle sales declined to 9.4% from 46.6% recorded in April 2021, (See figure 2). This is could be influenced by an increase in the cost of borrowing which resulted in low consumers’ confidence to purchase new vehicles.
- Light commercial vehicle sales declined to 309 from 392 recorded in April 2022 due to subdued commercial activities
- The number of new passenger vehicles sold for May 2022 declined to 402 from 466 vehicles sold in April 2022. This was due to low demand to take up loans to buy new vehicles
- Extra-heavy vehicle sales increased to 34 from 20 vehicles sold in April 2022. This was influenced by the rising demand for heavy goods and transportation services. This reflects the continuous dependence of the Namibian economy on road freight.
Figure 1: Monthly Vehicle Sales (May 2021 – May 2022), Namibia
Source:Lightstone (Pty) Ltd & HEI RESEARCH
Figure 2: Year on Year, Vehicle sales growth (May 2021- May 2022), Namibia
Source: Lightstone (Pty) Ltd & HEI RESEARCH
Outlook
We project that new vehicle sales for June 2022 will remain under pressure. This could be influenced by the foreseen increase in the interest rate in the next MPC meeting and result in low credit uptake to purchase new vehicles.