Consulting firm Simonis Storm (SS) has advised taking measures before the global shortage of chips (semiconductors) affects car sales in Namibia.
Since there aren’t enough microchips, the global car makers are finding it hard to produce cars leading to a reduction in global production. This reduction has also affected the importation of cars into Namibia and shipments from local car warehouses.
“This means that car imports and supply of stocks for local cars in Namibia will continue to be limited and limit the growth in car sales. However, the local market is likely to remain under supply, suggesting that car sales will exceed in the absence of global cars with production constraints.
According to NAAMSA (National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa), 705 total vehicles were sold in January 2022, a decrease of 4% compared to 734 vehicles sold in December 2021 and a slight increase of 1.7% to 693 vehicles were put on sale a year ago.
Sales of light vehicles decreased by 11.6%, from 301 vehicles in January 2021 to 266 in January 2022, with the largest decline in medium commercial vehicles registering the analysis period down to 44.4%, followed by heavy vehicles, which decreased by 21.1%.
However, passenger car sales in January 2022 rose 14.1% to 404 units from 354 units a year earlier. In 2021, almost 9,428 new cars were sold, an increase of 23.9% compared to the total sale of 7,612 in 2020. Of the 9,428 new cars sold in 2021, 4,484 are passenger cars, 4,178 are light commercial cars, and 766 are medium and heavy commercial cars.
