Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Despite hugereductions in the price of motor vehicles, car dealerships said sales have beenunexpectedly slow in recent weeks.

Price cutting deals, in some cases reductions oftens of millions of VND during recent holidays, failed to attract the expectedamount of buyers.

Nissen Vietnam slashed prices by up to 70million VND for buyers of Sunny, Navara, X-Trail and SUV Terra vehicles. Theyalso offered deals for registration fees and offered free gifts with certaincars.

Isuzu also offered similar sale prices alongwith Toyota Motor Vietnam (TMV) and BMW, but again, sales slowed.

According to the latest report from the VietnamAutomobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA), the total sales in April were21,021, down 35 percent compared with the previous month.

Taking into account the sales of 6,176 vehiclesof Hyundai Thanh Cong and VAMA member units, the whole Vietnamese automobilemarket in April reached 27,197 vehicles which was still a drop of more than 29 percentmonth-on-month.

A VAMA representative, who wanted to remainanonymous, said that one reason for the downtrend was because of theGovernment’s decision to increase registration fees for pickup trucks from 2 percentto 7.2 percent applied from early last month, reducing purchasing power.

“However, the most important factor is thatApril is not the season of car purchases and the change of consumers'demand due to increasing traffic congestion in urban areas and the hike of fuelthat all can make people gradually convert to public vehicles, helping themsave money,” he said.

Insiders said that while the discount programmeswere launched on various car models, the dealers increased the prices of anumber of ‘hot cars’, requiring customers to buy more accessories for cars fromtens of millions of VND to hundreds of millions of VND that caused a loss anumber of customers.

Meanwhile, with the information that some new attractivemodels such as Hyundai Elantra, 2019 Hyundai Tucson, Toyota Camry 2019, HondaBrio and Subaru Forester, which have many noticeable upgrades, will be importedto Vietnam this month with prices much lower than the previous versions, manycustomers delayed buying cars in April and to wait for the new ones.-VNS/VNA