HANOI, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's total automobile sales expanded 18.4 percent on-year to 230,334 units between January and September, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association said on Monday.
Specifically, sales of passenger cars grew 30.2 percent to 168,694 units, those of commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses dropped 3 percent to 57,523, and those of special-purpose vehicles plunged 27 percent to 4,117.
In September alone, 27,767 automobiles were sold in the Vietnamese market, surging 29 percent against August, and up 11 percent on-year.
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.
In the first nine months of this year, Vietnam spent nearly 5.5 billion U.S. dollars importing completely-built automobiles and components for assembly, seeing a year-on-year surge of 50.9 percent.
Specifically, the country imported 108,929 completely-built automobiles worth roughly 2.4 billion U.S. dollars, up 167.8 percent in volume and up 156.9 percent in value, according to its General Statistics Office.
