INTERVIEW - Car Sales in Slovenia Seen Falling by up to 15% in 2009 - Lobby Group

New registrations of cars and vans in November were 17.76% lower than a year earlier at 4,870 vehicles. November was the first month this year in which new car sales dropped in Slovenia on an annual basis, even though sales rose by 7.39% on the year to 73,376 vehicles in the first 11 months.

The global crisis has already started to take its toll on Slovenian car dealers, Mirko Fifolt, secretary of automotive industry department at Slovenia's Chamber of Commerce, told SeeNews in a recent interview.

“The fall was due to the economic recession and tougher conditions for getting credits at leasing companies,” he said, adding that buying a car is a big challenge in times of crisis when people prefer to save money rather than spend.

“Probably those families that have two cars now, will have only one. [...] I am afraid that there will be a fall of 10-12 percent in December [from a year earlier],” Fifolt said.

New car sales in the country of two million people are expected to decline even faster next year.

“We estimate that next year it will be even worse, at 60,000-65,000 cars at most, which means there will be a fall of 10 to 15 percent from this year,” Fifolt said.

The steepest fall in sales, up to 40%, is in the highest price brackets. The best-selling models are Renault Clio, which is assembled in Slovenia, Peugeot and Citroen models, and Volkswagen Golf, he said.

Countries in Southeast Europe have reported slowing rise in car sales in t0he last few months. In Romania, the biggest country in the region, sales of new passenger cars fell by 10.4% on the year to 257,941 in the first 11 months of 2008.

Slovenia is the wealthiest country in Southeast Europe in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The average net monthly salary in the country was 917.64 euro in October.

The country was the first one from the region to join the European Union, in 2004. Romania and Bulgaria followed last year.

Slovenian companies have already started to combat the impact of the global crisis by slashing jobs and cutting working hours and salaries. On Friday the Slovenian government's Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development, UMAR, said it expects the country's GDP to grow by 1.1% in 2009, down from 3.1% it projected earlier. UMAR also cut its GDP growth
forecast for this year to 4.1% from 4.8%.