There may be some light at the end of the tunnel in the protracted battle over the reporting of South Africa’s new- vehicle sales.

Associated Motor Holdings (AMH) boss Manny de Canha says that AMH and Amalgamated Automobile Distributors (AAD) start reporting “in more segments” from March. He does not elaborate on the reasons behind the move, saying only that pressure is mounting for the companies to do so.

AMH and AAD currently report sales in six segments, namely small cars (with reference to engine size), medium-size cars, large cars, 4 × 4 recreational/sports utility vehicles, light commercial vehicles and medium-size commercial vehicles.

AMH distributes popular brands such as Hyundai and Kia in South Africa and is owned by the Imperial group. Imperial is also McCarthy’s joint venture partner in AAD. AAD imports the Chinese Chery and Foton brands into South Africa.

AMH and AAD currently do not report monthly model-specific sales to the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa) industry body, owing to what it termed ‘competitive reasons’ in the past. That means it is difficult to determine how many Kia Rios or Hyundai Elantras were sold last month, for example.

Naamsa members, such as Volkswagen, Nissan, General Motors and Ford, however, do report model-specific sales.

Kia Motors South Africa CEO Ray Levin tells Engineering News that the decision to report sales is the result of “ongoing dis- cussions” with a number of role-players and that there has been formal request from government for Kia to report its sales in more detail.

“[In March], we will be increasing the number of categories in which we report. It will be current data and we will verify this data by supplying vehicle identity numbers to RGT. We will also give model specifics to RGT biannually.”

RGT Smart is the company responsible for collating the country’s monthly new- vehicle sales data.

Where its previous customer used to be Naamsa, however, it is likely to now be government, as sales results will be published on the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI’s) website going forward, as announced by Naamsa in January.

The reason for this can be found in Mercedes-Benz South Africa (MBSA) halting its monthly reporting of model- and volume-specific sales to Naamsa at the end of 2011.

MBSA CEO and president Dr Martin Zimmermann indicated early in 2012 that the company was waiting on government, through the DTI and the Competition Commission, to provide a clear indication that there would be no legal implications in releasing segment- and model-specific sales data before it would again report local sales in detail.

It currently provides only one compre- hensive number for monthly passenger car sales and one for monthly commercial vehicle sales.

MBSA stopped the release of all segment-specific data on the back of what it said was a global directive from its German parent company, Daimler.

Zimmermann said at the time that the directive followed antitrust regulations in Europe, which inhibit the sharing of information among competitors, as it could lead to collusion. He added that South African competition law often followed that drafted in Europe.

The feeling, however, was that if government itself became more involved in the collection of data, it would take away the risk of a possible antitrust challenge.

“If government makes the information available, then it cannot be anticompetitive. Government cannot lay a charge of antitrust behaviour against itself,” said MBSA commercial vehicles VP Kobus van Zyl in December.

A by-product of DTI publishing the information, as opposed to an industry body, however, may be a situation where every manufacturer may be obligated to report its sales, as government is unlikely to collect information from only selected vehicle manufacturers.

Speaking again on the issue earlier in February in East London, Zimmermann said MBSA was “close to reaching a solution with the DTI and Naamsa to change the system of reporting data”.

He said he hoped to see MBSA resume reporting spe- cific sales “in the next two months”.

Zimmermann said it was a positive move for government to be responsible for the collection of data as MBSA believed it would place “the industry in a better position to do our business”.