Beglium auto market in 2020 falls by 21.5% as the pandemic and lockdowns affect sales. Full-Year sales have been 431.491. BMW lands in second place by jumping 3 spots and registering the best hold on the leaderboard.
Market Trend
The Belgium car market has been hit in 2020 by the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic, which has impacted sales significantly.
In recent years the market was moderately positive, with sales grew up from 486k in 2012 to 550k in 2019, sustained by the positive economic momentum and by the incentives to renovate the car park with green vehicles. In 2019, despite decelerating compared to previous months, registrations reported the 5th annual gain in a row.
The key factors for the development of the industry were the introduction of vehicles with lower CO2 emissions and the country’s economic development. Both factors pushing the market alternatively up and down.
After starting the year with a slightly positive trend (+1.5%), the market quickly collapsed in March as the virus struck. The sharpest drop in sales this year was in April when sales declined by 90.1%.
Apparently, the Covid19 diffusion in the country started later compared with South Europe and the Government has not taken any concrete action to avoid the diffusion until mid-March. Then, following the decision taken by all the rest of the surrounding countries, it was decided to shut down all the activities, including automotive manufacturers and dealerships.
In the following months the market recovered quickly thanks to EU incentives, but nevertheless experienced a negative trend for the rest of the year, with double-digit drops reported in August (-24.1%), November (-15.8%), and December (-10.1%).
Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2020 have been 431.491, reporting a decline of 21.5% compared to 2019.
Brand-wise, this year the leader Volkswagen (-24.9%) lost 0.5% market share, followed by the growing BMW (-0.7%)-up 3 spots-, which gained an impressive 1.7% share and reported the top 10 hold. Peugeot maintained 7.8% share despite falling 21.7%. Renault fell in 4th place while losing 34.1%, followed by Mercedes which lost 16.3% and fell 1 spot.
Audi -up 1 spot- lost 10%, followed by Citroen (-24%) -up 1 spot- and Skoda which jumped 5 spot and lost only 3% sales. Closing the leaderboard we have Opel -down 3 spots- which reported the worst performance in the leaderboard by losing 37.5% and Ford -down 1 spot- losing 25.2%.
The most sold vehicle this year has been the Volkswagen Golf (-35.3%) with 9.655 units sold, followed by the Renault Clio, which lost 21.1% registering 9.315 new sales this year. The Hyundai Tucson (-24.8%) closes the podium by jumping 1 spot and reports 8.203 new units sold.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 models.
