New-vehicle sales in Feb-ruary, at 53 220 units, crept up 1.6% over sales in February last year, reports the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa).

This was much slower than the 14.1% year-on-year growth recorded in January.

The new passenger car mar-ket, at 36 666 units, inched up 304 units, or 0.8%, compared with February last year.

Sales of light commercial vehicles were up 4.7%.

The truck market, however, could not mirror this positive trend. Sales of medium commer-cials, at 868 units, were down 7.6%, with the heavy trucks and buses market declining by 2.4% to 1 496 units.

Exports of new vehicles from South Africa had a more positive month, growing 22.4% to 27 611 units, com-pared with February last year.

Naamsa says vehicle exports are expected to improve further over the remainer of the year.

Standard Bank Vehicle Asset Finance head Sydney Soundy says factors that may serve to boost sales in the domestic market this year are low interest rates and the natural vehicle replacement cycle.

However, a number of factors may also subdue sales, including modest economic growth in South Africa in 2013 at 2.5%, a weak exchange rate that will have a negative effect on vehicle pricing, rising carbon emissions tax from April and potential labour disruptions in the automotive sector later this year, as well as increases in food, energy and transport costs, impacting on consumer disposable income.

Soundy says the household debt to disposable income ratio also remains high, with the number of consumers with impaired credit records at 46.7% – a number which has seen no improvement over the last four years.

WesBank sales and mar-keting executive head Chris De Kock comments that, while new-vehicle prices are increasing, dealers are paying less for used cars as the supply and demand side of this market corrects itself. This will see the pricing gap between new and used cars grow and consumers are likely to start seeing more value in used vehicles again. He believes this will reverse the trend of potential used vehicle buyers being enticed into the new-vehicle market, placing further pressure on the growth rate of new cars.

He says WesBank book data also shows that the average transaction value on new cars continues to rise steadily, reaching R226 076 in February, compared with less than R200 000 two years earlier, showing the impact of new-car price increases, while the used-car average value remains flat.