Brazil's 2011 import car growth 87.4%

The Association of Brazilian Automobile Importers announced on the 11th that the country’s sales of imported automobiles in 2011 amounted to 1.994 million, an increase of 87.4% from 2010's 106,400. However, the association also predicts that sales of imported cars will fall by at least 20% this year.

In view of this good sales performance, the share of imported cars in the Brazilian automotive market has increased to 5.82% last year. According to the figures announced by Brazil’s National Automobile Dealers Association, Brazil’s total car sales in 2011 was 3.4256 million.

In the ranking of imported vehicle sales, South Korea’s Kia Motors topped the list with 77,200 vehicles, accounting for 38.7% of all imported vehicles. China’s Jianghuai and Chery Automobiles ranked second and third, with sales of 23,700 (11.9%) and 21,700 (10.9%) respectively.

Among them, JAC's best-selling brand in Brazil is J3, with a total of 12,800 units sold; Chery's best-selling brand is QQ, with a total of 9914 units sold. In addition, Hafei sold 16.7 million cars in Brazil last year, its flagship brand is committed to trucks.

In spite of this, the Brazilian Automotive Importers Association is very pessimistic about the prospects for 2012 and believes that sales of imported cars will at least drop by 20%. The main reason is that the Brazilian government has greatly increased the taxation on imported cars. In addition, the appreciation trend of the US dollar will also partially affect the sales of imported cars.

In order to protect the domestic auto industry from the impact of imports, Brazil increased the industrial product tax on imported vehicles by 30 percentage points in December last year. At the same time, it indicated that those who are willing to invest and set up factories in the local area can properly lower the tax rate. Currently, JAC and Chery have announced plans to set up factories in Brazil.

The world-renowned consulting company KPMG recently published a research report that Brazil’s car sales volume last year ranked it fifth in the world’s auto market. In the next five years, Brazil’s annual sales of automobiles are expected to grow rapidly to 6 million vehicles, which will become the world’s third largest auto market after China and the United States.