HANOI, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's automobile sales in the first seven months of this year dropped 6 percent year-on-year to 154,930 units, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association said on Friday.
Specifically, sales of passenger cars stood at 90,549 units, commercial vehicles at 55,915, and special-purpose vehicles at 8,421, posting respective declines of 2 percent, 10 percent and 18 percent.
In July alone, 20,662 automobiles of all kinds were sold, down 15 percent against June, the association said, noting that sales of passenger cars last month stood at 11,195 units.
Automobile sales are likely to surge early next year when import taxes on vehicles will be slashed to zero percent in line with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Free Trade Area, local experts said.
Vietnam spent over 3.1 billion U.S. dollars importing completely-built automobiles and components for assembly between January and July, experiencing a year-on-year drop of 9.4 percent, said the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
In the seven-month period, Vietnam imported 57,000 completely-built automobiles worth more than 1.2 billion U.S. dollars, seeing respective decreases of 5.5 percent and 15.5 percent.
