New Vehicle Market and Exports
are generally linked to the strength of the economy and for South Africa, the pandemic unfortunately deepened an existing economic recession. Unsurprisingly and not dissimilar to other major vehicle manufacturing countries, the second quarter new vehicle sales performance registered the biggest quarterly decline on record, by 64,3% year-on-year, nearly double the decline registered in Quarter 1 in 2009, during the peak of the global financial crisis in 2008/2009.
For the first nine months 2020 vehicle exports were now down by 112 011 units, or 37,6%, compared to the same period last year. Europe, the domestic automotive industry’s main export region, reflects a decline of 39,2% in vehicle exports for the year to date. Considering that three out of every four vehicles are destined for Europe, a second wave of COVID-19 in Europe, in particular, poses some downside risks on the pace of recovery in domestic vehicle exports;
The naamsa Organisational Structure and organogram was approved and all newly created and vacant positions were filled to support the implementation of the new naamsa strategy;
SAAM 2021 to 2035 – Guidelines and information documents have now been finalised and the APDP2 has been extended to start on 01 July 2021;
Transformation and Automotive Industry Transformation Fund [AITF] initiative represents an equity equivalent project in lieu of the BBBEE scorecard ownership points. The AITF is now operational for the seven OEMs and the CEO has been appointed. 32 multinational component suppliers in the process to join the AITF;
CEOs Confidence Index – a further new addition introduced to the naamsa Quarterly Business Review is the inclusion of a naamsa CEOs Confidence Index as an in-house leading business confidence indicator of current and future developments in the domestic automotive industry. The naamsa Confidence Index is built to enhance the quarterly reporting with opinions canvassed anonymously from each of the naamsa CEOs;
Right to Repair – the Competition Commission considered naamsa submissions to open the aftersales market to previously disadvantaged companies. Many of the proposals made by naamsa have been accepted and incorporated onto the final Guidelines which are due to be made public before the end of December 2020;
Export Levies were suspended for a period of 12 months in 2020 and we will soon find a resolution to this longstanding matter. A Working Group represented byGovernment, the Regulator and the industry has been established in order to find a long lasting solution to the export levies issue;
COVID-19 – naamsa established itself firmly as the authority and a strong industry voice and led all COVID-19 engagements with Government. As a result, we successfully achieved to move production of vehicles from Level 3 to Level 4 and retail sales from Level 2 to Level 4. In addition, naamsa also continues to drive the COVID-19 industry support and conversations through the Automotive Industry COVID-19 Command Council;
EOC Workstreams – eight EOC Workstreams became operational in 2020 driven by the naamsa team; and
Harnessing electric vehicles for industrial development in South Africa report – the research conducted by TIPS, co-funded by naamsa and the DTIC, was commissioned to investigate policy options available to the country to advance the domestic automotive industry’s position in the global electromobility landscape. The recommendations from this report would aim to create an industry Road Map with policy options to engage with relevant role-players to advance the evolution of electromobility in South Africa.