New car sales on the Romanian market in H1 reached 42,606 units, up 13.3% since the previous year. However, the sales level is comparable to the ones registered in Slovenia or Croatia, whose population is several times lower than Romania's. Hungary, whose number of inhabitants is half the number of those in Romania, registered twice the level of sales in Romania.
Were we to conduct a survey to ask people about their wish to purchase a car, Romanians would probably rank first.
The main explanation for this gap between wishing and actually affording to buy a car is, undoubtedly, the low purchasing power of the Romanians, as they make an average of 100 dollars a month.
Ruled by domestic carmakers, the Romanian automotive market is one of the lowest markets in the region, if considering a ratio between the number of new cars sold and the number of inhabitants.
"The local car market has a peculiarity, that is Romanians own a Dacia, the only car available for $3,000-$3,500," said Marius Carp, executive director of the Romanian Association of Car Makers and Importers in Romania (APIA).
"We may even say the Romanian market is fortunate to have Dacia around. Bulgarians have never had their national car, so that the sales per capita are even lower than in Romania, " Carp added.
The low purchasing power is and will most likely remain the main reason for the low sales level on the Romanian market. Another explanation, Carp feels, might be the low crediting power of the people in Romania, that is the impossibility of getting a loan with good terms.
"Several years back Poland witnessed a boom of the car market, which went up 30%, due to relatively cheap credits for the population," he added.
"At present, the interests on the Romanian market are very high and matched by a lot of mandatory requirements for credits: endorsers, mortgages and other types of collateral."
The APIA official considers that the "feeling of economic stability, which urges those in the so-called "grey" area (the people about to buy a car, but uncertain of what the future might hold) to actually buy a car."
According to APIA statistics, a Romanian in 2000 spent $22 on the average to purchase a car, seven times less than a Pole. Even in the best year of the Romanian automotive market ever, that is 1998, a Romanian spent five times less for the purchase of a car than a Pole.
Only 3.7 new or second-hand cars per one thousand people were sold in Romania in 2000, that is five times less than in Poland. As a comparison, the average consumption in the United States was $1,200 at an average price of $20,000 per vehicle.
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