BUSINESS DAY TV: Consumers are moving to the used, lower end of the vehicle market
WesBank's Rudolph Mahoney explains why he expects the South African vehicle market to accelerate in 2017 — and how bakkies are booming
BUSINESS DAY TV: After a dismal year last year, sales of new vehicles are expected to tick up this year, due to the firmer rand, steady interest rates and an improving economy. That’s the prediction of WesBank, which was almost spot on with last year’s decline of 11.4%. Joining us with more is Rudolph Mahoney, he’s head of brand and communications at WesBank. Rudolph, so you point out in a release last week that there had been three years of declines in auto sales in SA. Let’s put it into perspective: before that, we had a number of very good years didn’t we, so are things just leveling off? RUDOLPH MAHONEY: Yes. So we had a couple of good years post the recession 2008-09. We had five or six years of consecutive growth and the last few years have seen the vehicle sales decline, mainly as a result of the depreciation of the rand.
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