KOTA BARU: Malaysia's largest car company by sales Perusahaan Otomobil Kedua Sdn Bhd (Perodua) believes that 2022's total industry volume (TIV) will exceed 630,000 vehicles.
Perodua president and chief executive officer Datuk Sri Zainal Abidin Ahmad said this was because nearly all automotive brands had accumulated massive bookings between January and June this year.
The industry can do better than a 30,000-registration increase by the end of this year given the government's extention of the registration deadline for the sales and service tax exemption (SST) for all vehicles booked on or before June 30 2022 for delivery by March 31 2023, Zainal said at the media drive of the newly-launched Alza here today.
The Malaysia Automotive Association announced in July that an increase in the TIV to 630,000 units from a forecast of 600,000 announced by it in January 2022.
Perodua reportedly collected 24,265 orders in July, which it considered a healthy sign that demand for its vehicles remained strong notwithstanding the sales tax reinstatement on July 1 2022.
The company also reported higher year-to-date sales numbers with a 48.7 per cent jump to 145,689 units sold between January and July 2022 compared with 97,945 units sold in the same period last year.
"The sales increase can be attributed to two main reasons. The first is due to the strong demand for our vehicles, especially between January and June this year as customers wanted to take advantage of the government's sales tax exemption initiative.
"The second reason why the 2022 year-to-date numbers are stronger is due to the nationwide Covid-19 pandemic lockdown that happened between June and mid-August last year," said Zainal.
He added that while booking momentum not as strong as the bookings collected in the first half of 2022, it was better than expected and that this was evidence that the automotive industry still has room to grow.
"While the year-to-date numbers are encouraging, we are still cautious as there are still lingering issues in the automotive ecosystem last month, which include shortage of labour and residual semiconductor supply availability.
"As a result, our month-to-month sales were reduced by 13.3 per cent to 18,346 units in July compared with 21,164 units registered in June this year," said Zainal.
Responding to the all-new Alza, Zainal said the multipurpose vehicle (MPV) received 39,000 bookings so far - of which 9,000 was collected in July.
He previously announced a 3,000 monthly sales target for the Alza.
Hoping to speed up the delivery process, Zainal said Perodua was working closely the government to overcome the labour shortage with production to resume in full beginning this month.
"We have secured enough chip supply for us to produce and register more than 247,800 units this year on the semiconductor issue.
"However we are still working on sustaining production growth. This means that we could not announce our new targets yet," he said.
Zainal said the limited units and long term subscription-based model of the upcoming Ativa Hybrid was a test of sorts for the Malaysian market.
As willing selected participants would be monitored, he added that the research was to see market acceptance, as well as vehicle practicality and subscription-model feasibility for the company's future ventures.
Zainal said they should be able to come out with a more concise report after a year of the test implementation.