Car importers have been eagerly waiting for the start of the"Rabla" car scrappage scheme, a "breath of fresh air" on a marketwhere almost 2100 cars were sold in January, compared with morethan 20,000 units only two years ago, a three billion-euro yearlybusiness that is not showing signs of a rebound.
Over ten volume brands in Romania, which account for more than 80%of the market together, are trying to persuade Romanians to choosetheir brand, having earmarked budgets in the range of tens ofthousands of euros for promotional purposes for the first time thisyear.
On the other hand, the car dealers that survived 2009, after 10% ofthem went bankrupt, are becoming voucher brokers, which is thenewest business in Romania, put at 55 million euros, given that60,000 junk cars will be scrapped.
"We are interested in buying vouchers, for which we pay 1,000 to1,500 RON on the average. Therefore the client who buys a new carwill pay this amount and the rest up to 3,800 RON will be thediscount received," said Nicolae Sorescu, manager of RadaciniMotors, Opel and Chevrolet dealer in Bucharest.
A voucher brokerage system was also put in place outside thecapital city, at the Ford Plus Auto dealer in Craiova, but in this case it only consists in building "a database".
"Before the start of the scheme we built a database of all thosewho want to sell their junk car and implicitly their vouchers, aswell as of those who want to buy a car through this scheme," saidAdrian Marasescu, Plus Auto's sales manager. He added that,usually, the clients interested in the scheme wanted to buy a newcar using two or even three vouchers.
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