Automotive Industry: Sales Fall By Nearly 20% By End of 2020

Casablanca - Sales of new cars stood at 133,308 units for the year 2020, down 19.7% from the previous year, announced, on Thursday, president of the Moroccan Association of Car Importers (AIVAM) Adil Bennani. With 133,308 units sold in 2020, the market is experiencing an "exceptional" regression compared to 2019, said Bennani during a digital press conference on the presentation of the sector's results in 2020, specifying that the passenger car segment was down 21.1% while the light commercial vehicle segment declined 7.9%. The considerable drop in sales is mainly explained by the pandemic situation linked to the new Coronavirus, he said, noting that sales collapsed from March following the lockdown.

According to the President of AIVAM, the lifting of restrictions in June 11 allowed a resumption of passenger car sales, which reached in the second half of the year the levels of 2019 over the same period. However, this recovery did not help compensate the volumes of the months of lockdown. For light commercial vehicles' sales, they followed the same trend as the passenger cars' sales, with a faster recovery from June, said Bennani. Regarding the other components of the market, the "Taxis" component recorded a significant level of registrations which increased by 233% compared to 2019 to 7,130 units, boosted in particular by the return of the subsidy for the renewal of large and small taxis.