August New Car Registrations Drops in Italy

09/11/96

Reuters has reported that new car registrations in Italy for August are expected to pale compared to registrations for the same month last year, said sector analysts said.

In August 1995, Italy saw 79,953 registrations. Estimates for last month predict a four to ten percent drop, year-on-year. July new car registrations rose 0.85 percent year-on-year to 157,000 units, said the ministry of transport. In the first seven months of this year registrations totaled 1.152 million, down 0.27 percent compared to the same period last year.

Giamprimo Quagliano, director of the Centro Studi Promotor, said "The trend is negative for August with even gloomier prospects for the rest of the year." He said the government should introduce some form of tax incentives to encourage car purchases "to put an end to a situation which is getting really worrying."

Quagliano said it was "very probable" that total registrations would drop below 1.7 million units for the whole of 1996, compared to 1.726 million in 1995.

Several industrial sources forecast a fall in August new registrations of around 10 percent year-on-year to 72,000, with at least one analyst predicting "a decline proportionately greater for foreign marques than for Italy's Fiat group."

Giampaolo Trasi of IMI-Sigeco, a Milan broker, forecast a less drastic fall that would ring in at around 3.5 to 4.0 percent (77,000 units): "The negative market trend is still continuing but I don't think the fall in August will be more than four percent." He also said he was sceptical about the possibility the car market getting a boost from tax incentives "I don't believe there will be any incentives of a fiscal nature apart from perhaps the indirect incentive of more frequent obligatory car safety checkups which would tend to speed up the replacement of old vehicles."

For the whole of 1996, Trasi predicted a 2% drop in registrations to 1.7 million unit. Trasi also predicted a three percent improvement in 1997 and a rise to 1.9 million in 1998."

Paul Dever -- The Auto Channel