Perodua president and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Zainal Abidin Ahmad
KUALA LUMPUR: Perusahaan Otomobil Kedua Sdn Bhd (Perodua) received 24,265 orders in July, a healthy sign that demand for its vehicles remain strong notwithstanding the sales tax reinstatement on July 1.
In a statement, the carmaker said year-to-date (YTD) sales jumped 48.7% to 145,689 units compared with 97,945 units sold in the same period last year.
“The sales increase can be attributed to two main reasons, the first is due to the strong demand for our vehicles, especially between January and June this year as customers wanted to take advantage of the government’s sales tax exemption initiative.”
“The second reason why the 2022 year-to-date numbers are stronger is due to the nationwide Covid-19 pandemic lockdown that happened between June and mid-August last year,” Perodua president and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Zainal Abidin Ahmad said.
He added that while the booking momentum was not as strong as the bookings collected in the first half of 2022, it was better than expected and that this is evidence that the automotive industry still has room to grow.
Zainal also disclosed that the All-New Perodua Alza received 39,000 bookings so far, of which 9,000 was collected in July.
“While the YTD numbers are encouraging, we are still cautious as there are still lingering issues in the automotive ecosystem last month, which include shortage of labour and residual semiconductor supply availability.”
“As a result, our month-to-month sales were reduced by 13.3% to 18,346 units in July compared with 21,164 units registered in June this year,” he said.
He said Perodua is working closely with the government to overcome the labour shortage by early August and the carmaker expected its production to resume in full beginning this month.
“On the semiconductor issue, we have secured enough chip supply for us to produce and register more than 247,800 units this year, however, we are still working on sustaining production growth. This means that we could not announce our new targets yet,” Zainal said.
