MENA Car Market in Q3 of 2020 remains down 29.6% at 1.04 Million sales. Egypt was the only positive country, gaining respectively 10.6%, while every other country declined in double-digits. The leading country, Saudi Arabia, performed slightly better than the market average.
Medium-term market direction
The automotive industry in the Middle East and North Africa region has stopped its growth in 2014, immediately after having hit the 3 million units milestone for the first time.
Since 2014 the market declined to 2.02 million units in 2017 and will further lose this year.
The key reason for the decline is related to the fall of oil prices in the international market, which created a deficit in Gulf countries, moving governments to apply restrictive economic policies and to increase taxes, with VAT introduced for the first time in Saudi Arabia and UAE. An additional reason for the Algerian market fall is related to the new automotive national plan, introduced in 2014, which killed the market.
In the 2018 data report sales volume at 1.92 million (-5.3%) with the regional performance dragged down by heavy losses in Saudi Arabia, down 22.1%, and in the second-largest market, Israel, down 5.7%. On a positive tone Algeria, thanks to the start-up of several local plants and up 27.9%, and Iraq, after the end of the civil war, up 45.3%.
In 2019, the MENA market reported a positive performance, selling 1.99 million units, up 3.2% from the previous year.
After a great start in 2020 -with Year to Date February sales up in double-digits (+12.9%) – the market has deteriorated in March due to the Coronavirus outbreak, leading the Q1 marginally down (-2.5%). The market was also largely hit in the following months, which dragged registrations down 23.3% in the First Half of the year at 749.064 sales. In Q3 the market was not able to recover, in fact, it even further declined as the effects of the COVID-19 continued to affect the economy. Indeed, 1.04 Million units have been sold Year to Date in September, 29.6% lower than the previous year.
Looking at the ranking by country, the only one to report growth was Egypt, increasing sales by 10.6% and holding 12.06% of the market share, meanwhile, the most influential country, Saudi Arabia (holding 29.5% share of the market), performed better than the market average. Kuwait, Oman, and Iraq all registered heavy losses, while Israel and the United Arab Emirates almost matched the market trend.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales by country.
