HANOI, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's automobile sales in the first nine months of this year were 198,253 units, posting a year-on-year decline of 8 percent, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association said on Wednesday.
Specifically, sales of both passenger cars and commercial vehicles such as trucks, pick-ups and vans, dropped 7 percent, and those of special-purpose vehicles fell 18 percent.
The smaller sales were mainly attributed to wait-and-see attitude of potential buyers who were waiting for lower prices of imported vehicles, local experts said, noting that automobile sales are likely to increase early next year when import taxes on vehicles will be slashed to zero percent in line with the ASEAN ( the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Free Trade Area.
Vietnam spent over 3.8 billion U.S. dollars importing completely-built automobiles and components for assembly from January to September, down 12.4 percent year-on-year, said the country's General Statistics Office.
Specifically, Vietnam imported 70,000 completely-built automobiles worth more than 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, down 9.1 percent in volume and down 14.7 percent in value.
