HANOI, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's total automobile sales grew 22 percent on-year to 126,646 units in the first five months of this year, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association said on Thursday.
Specifically, sales of passenger cars surged 35 percent to 92,761 units, those of commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses climbed up 0.2 percent to 31,422, and those of special-purpose vehicles dropped 39 percent to 2,463.
In May alone, 27,373 automobiles were sold in the Vietnamese market, up 30 percent against April, and up 18 percent against May 2018.
The bigger sales of vehicles especially passenger cars were mainly attributed to firms' grand promotion campaigns, local traders said, noting that many automobile agents in May offered discounts of 30 million Vietnamese dongs to 169 million Vietnamese dongs (1,300 U.S. dollars to 7,300 U.S. dollars) per car branded Toyota or Mazda.
Over 288,600 automobiles were sold in the Vietnamese market in 2018, up nearly 6 percent against 2017. Specifically, the sale of locally-assembled automobiles rose 11 percent, and that of imported vehicles dropped over 6 percent, said the association.
Vietnam spent roughly 3 billion U.S. dollars importing completely-built automobiles and components for assembly in the first five months of this year, seeing a year-on-year surge of 76.4 percent.
Specifically, the country imported approximately 65,700 completely-built automobiles worth nearly 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, up 634.2 percent in volume and up 499.7 percent in value, according to its Ministry of Industry and Trade.
