Auto sales in July reach record monthly high

Indonesia’s monthly auto sales reached an all-time high in July, boosting automakers’ confidence that overall sales may exceed this year’s target of 800,000 units sold.

Indonesian Automotive Industry Association (Gaikindo) chairman Sudirman Maman Rusdi said in Jakarta on Wednesday that car sales in July rose 23.09 percent to 88,751 units, up from 72,100 units in the same month last year. July’s sales also rose by 26.5 percent from the 70,157 units sold in June.

He explained that the figure did not include sales booked during the recent 19th Indonesia International Motor Show (IIMS), as the deliveries would be carried out in August or September. The 10-day exhibition concluded on Sunday with 11,585 cars sold, a value of Rp 3.27 trillion (US$386.35 million).

“This is really out of our prediction for July, as sales may range from 75,000 and 80,000 units,” he told The Jakarta Post.

Sudirman said that besides higher demand in line with people’s improving purchasing power, the rise was partly driven by a better supply of components and vehicles, enabled by the recovery in Japan, home to many major car makers, following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country in March and halted operations at many factories, including automobiles and their components.

“Component supplies were already back to normal in July after being temporarily disrupted from April to May. This has enabled automakers to maximize production during the month, resulting in improved car supply,” he said.

Even though he was upbeat that yearly sales might exceed 800,000 units, Sudirman said he would rather “wait and see” what sales figures were in the coming months.

At the beginning of this year, Gaikindo projected automobile sales for 2011 would top 830,000 units, which would be a historic new figure in car sales in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. However, it later reduced its target to about 800,000 units due to an expected drop in parts supply from Japan after the disasters.

PT Astra Daihatsu Motor (ADM), one of Indonesia’s major automakers, said it also booked record high sales in July, when its sales figures hit 14,108 units, bringing a cumulative figure of about 62,000 units sold from January to July.

“This is the record during Daihatsu’s existence in Indonesia, and it outperformed previous records of 12,000 units in December last year,” ADM’s marketing director Amelia Tjandra said, adding that in July, her firm also booked another record in producing 35,000 units on the back sufficient supply of spare parts after Japan’s disasters.

Amelia said she had a positive outlook about sales prospects in upcoming months and, based on the January-July data, she was optimistic that sales could exceed 130,000 units, up slightly from the firm’s initial target of 125,000 units. Indonesia’s largest automobile producer, Toyota Astra-Motor (TAM), said it sold 30,188 units in July, resulting in January-July sales of 182,583 units.

TAM marketing director Joko Trisanyoto said that, although the figure did not surpass March’s sales of about 81,000 units, his firm remained upbeat that it would reach a minimum market share of 36 in the total market by the year’s end.

The huge domestic market, rising middle class, stellar economic performance and improved investment in the country have led a number of automakers to pour more investment into the automotive sector.