Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co., Japan’s largest and third-largest automakers, led a 29 percent drop in the country’s auto sales last month as unemployment surged.
Vehicle sales, excluding minicars, fell to 166,365 units, the Tokyo-based Japan Automobile Dealers Association said in a statement today. That’s the lowest April total since the group began taking the tally in 1968. Toyota sold 75,777 vehicles excluding its Lexus-brand cars, down 33 percent. Sales at Nissan fell 39 percent to 21,170.
Japan’s jobless rate rose to the highest in more than four years in March, eroding demand for new cars. In response, the government last month began offering tax cuts to buyers of new fuel-efficient vehicles including Toyota’s Prius and Honda’s Insight hybrids to spur sales.
“The government needs to take more steps like abandoning highway tolls to make people own and drive cars,” said Hitoshi Yamamoto, chief executive officer of Tokyo-based Fortis Asset Management Japan Co., which manages $5.5 billion in Japanese equities. “The market is a little hopeless.”
Prime Minister Taro Aso also plans to give subsidies on purchases of new fuel-efficient cars to spur sales as part of his 15.4 trillion yen ($155 billion) economic stimulus program. While the Parliament needs to pass a supplementary budget to finance the package, the government expects the subsidies to boost sales by 690,000 vehicles this fiscal year.
Tax Cuts
Vehicle sales for the year ending March may fall 8.5 percent to 4.3 million vehicles, the lowest in 32 years, according to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.
“The tax incentives failed to stem a drop in auto demand,” Takeshi Fushimi, a director of the auto dealers group, told reporters in Tokyo today. “We hope subsidies will help stave off deepening the bottom.”
Honda Motor Co., Japan’s second-largest automaker, bucked the industry’s monthly decline with a 4 percent sales increase to 32,387 vehicles. The dealers’ group attributed the rise to Honda’s Insight hybrid, which went on sale in Japan in February.
Mazda Motor Corp., a Ford Motor Co. affiliate, sold 7,795 vehicles, down 38 percent.
Sales of minicars, powered with no larger than 0.66-liter engines, slumped 13 percent to 117,670 units. Industrywide sales including minicars dropped for the ninth straight month, falling 23 percent to 284,035 vehicles last month.
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Japan’s unemployment rate rose to 4.8 percent from 4.4 percent in February, the statistics bureau said today in Tokyo. The ratio of jobs available to each applicant dropped to 0.52 from 0.59, the Labor Ministry said.
Suzuki Motor Co., Japan’s second-largest minicar maker, sold 40,030 minicars, down 13 percent. Daihatsu Motor Co., the country’s biggest, had a 14 percent decline with sales totaling 40,987 vehicles.
