Vehicle output in China posted a mild growth in January compared to December, but sales declined sharply, according to an industry organization.

The nation's vehicle output totaled 406,300 units last month, up only 0.62 percent from the previous month, statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed.

Meanwhile, sales of domestically-made vehicles tumbled by 25 percent to 243,100 units since December.

"We expect vehicle sales will grow starting from February," said Zhu Yiping, the spokeswoman of the auto association.

However, analysts said that auto sales are only expected to rebound during the second half of this year.

"Conditions in the domestic auto market would not improve greatly during the first half of this year due to customers' persistent delays in buying cars, despite manufacturers' frequent price cuts," said Jia Xinguang from China Automotive Industry Consulting and Development Corp.

Jia predicted that both China's total vehicle output and sales of domestically-made automobiles will grow by about 10 percent to 5.6 million units this year.

The expected growth is down from 15.5 percent last year.

Vehicle output in China stood at 5.07 million units last year.

When compared with figures a year earlier, vehicle output and sales last month jumped by 35.39 percent and 20.68 percent respectively.

Passenger vehicle output in China grew by 23.74 percent year-on-year to 257,700 units in January, including 169,800 cars, 11,300 multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs) and 11,200 sport utility vehicles (SUVs).

Car output was up 3.22 percent from December and 20.13 percent from January last year.

Sales of domestically-made passenger vehicles rose by 8.05 percent year-on-year to 243,100 units in January, including 152,900 cars,7 ,200 MPVs and 12,000 SUVs.

Car sales were down 35.85 percent from last December and 0.57 percent from a year earlier.

The year-on-year growth of both commercial vehicle output and sales in China was much faster than that of passenger cars in January, according to the auto association.

The nation's commercial vehicle output amounted to 148,600 units last month, an increase of 61.81 percent from a year earlier.

The output included 13,900 buses and 89,500 trucks.

Bus output was down 14.30 percent from last December but was up 28.51 percent from January last year.

Truck output was down 3.76 percent but was up 57.52 percent from January last year.

Sales of domestically-made commercial vehicles rose by 56.94 percent year-on-year to 123,000 units in January, including 14,000 buses and 77,400 trucks.

Bus sales were down 24.54 percent from the previous month.

Truck sales were down 23.35 percent.

First Automotive Works Corp (FAW) remained the biggest Chinese automaker selling 56,100 vehicles in January.

Combined sales of China's top five vehicle manufacturers - FAW, Dongfeng Motor Corp, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp, Beijing Automotive Holdings Corp and Chang'an Motor Corp - amounted to 238,700 units last month.

(China Daily February 23, 2005)