Sales of new vehicles are expected to tick up this year, because of steady interest rates and firmer brand. There had been three years of declines in auto sales. Before that, we had a number of very good years didn’t we, so are things just leveling off?
The answer is yes. We had a couple of good years post the recession 2008-09. We had five or six years of consecutive growth and the last few years have seen the vehicle sales decline, mainly as a result of the depreciation of the brand. What we’ve seen is customer demand has not reduced at all over the course of the last three years. Even though new vehicle sales has declined, we’ve received a record number of applications for 2016. So consumer demand is still remaining fairly robust. Of course, it has shifted to the used market where we’re now getting about two and half used applications for every one new application. It’s just the matter of demand shifting to the used car market.
Consumers are being under pressure, dealer sales also being under pressure. Interestingly enough, the rental market and government… we do see some growth in those segments. The rental market will really push the passenger vehicle sales and that’s because of the growth that we’re seeing in tourism, and we forecast for tourism during 2017.
