The Malaysian Automotive Association released January 2022 automotive sales and production data.
Every month, the Malaysian Automotive Association (MAA) puts out their monthly report on production and sales data for the nation’s automotive industry. Last month’s performance was as follows:
While the sales and production numbers for the first month of 2022 was a lot higher (sales was up 22% year-on-year) than it was in the first month of 2021, the Malaysian Automotive Association also draws attention to last months numbers. Compared to December 2021, January 2022 sales slumped by as much as 38%.
They attribute the slump from December to a few factors. The first being that customers had bought forward in December 2021, anticipating a fresh 2022 car for resale value reasons. Customer demand was also unusually high due to year-end promotional campaigns runs by various brands. Honda Malaysia pushed a massive sales campaign that lasted the entirety of Q4 2021 while SDAC Ford also started their CNY 2022 campaign all the way back in December of 2022. These are just a couple of examples, but the gist of it is, most brands were pushing hard in the last few months of 2022 to recover sales following the 2nd wave of COVID-19 and the related lockdowns.
What’s more, January also saw a slump in sales due to the floods that came in late December 2022, which not only affected many Malaysians, but also the supply chain for car production in the country throughout January.
What’s more, February 2022’s numbers is anticipated to not be much better than January’s due to ongoing supply shortages (including the chip and flood-related shortages). Plus February is a shorter month overall.
Just last week, Honda Malaysia predicted the 2022 TIV to stand at 600,000 units. With just about 40,000 units sold in January 2022 and another 40,000 anticipated by the Malaysian Automotive Association in February 2022, it looks like Honda’s numbers may be a little optimistic. But economic recovery does look like it’s around the corner, so perhaps they’ll be proven right.
