HANOI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's total automobile sales in the first quarter of this year stood at 73,297 units, a year-on-year rise of 25.2 percent, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association said on Friday.
Specifically, sales of passenger cars surged 43 percent to 56,668, those of commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses dropped 8 percent to 15,802, and those of special-purpose vehicles fell 55 percent to 827.
In March alone, 30,055 automobiles were sold in the Vietnamese market, up 162.4 percent against February, and up 44.9 percent against March 2018.
Over 288,600 automobiles were sold in the Vietnamese market in 2018, up nearly 6 percent from 2017. Specifically, the sale of locally-assembled automobiles rose 11 percent, and that of imported vehicles dropped over 6 percent, said the association.
In the first quarter of this year, Vietnam spent over 1.8 billion U.S. dollars importing completely-built automobiles and components for assembly, seeing a year-on-year surge of 103.7 percent. Specifically, the country imported nearly 36,800 completely-built automobiles worth 797 million U.S. dollars, according to its Ministry of Industry and Trade.
