HANOI, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's total automobile sales expanded 21 percent on-year to 154,273 units in the first half of this year, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association said on Wednesday.
Specifically, sales of passenger cars grew 34.6 percent to 113,155 units, those of commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses dropped 1.5 percent to 38,071, and those of special-purpose vehicles plunged 32 percent to 3,047.
In June alone, 27,520 automobiles were sold in the Vietnamese market, up 0.1 percent against May, and up 19 percent against June 2018.
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.
Between January and June, Vietnam spent roughly 3.7 billion U.S. dollars importing completely-built automobiles and components for assembly, seeing a year-on-year surge of 79.9 percent.
Specifically, the country imported 77,795 completely-built automobiles worth over 1.7 billion U.S. dollars, up 532.4 percent in volume and up 424.8 percent in value, according to its Ministry of Industry and Trade.
