New passenger car registrations in Bulgaria up 1.7% in January – September 2019

New passenger car registrations in Bulgaria in January to September 2019 increased by 1.7 per cent compared with the first nine months of 2018, ACEA, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association said.

However, new passenger car registrations in the country dropped by 8.6 per cent in September 2019 compared with September 2018, ACEA said.

In January to September 2019, there were 26 894 new passenger car registrations, while in September 2019 alone, there were 2522.

In September 2019, EU demand for new passenger cars increased by 14.5 per cent to reach 1.2 million units registered in total.

To a large extent, this strong year-on-year growth is the result of a low base of comparison, as registrations fell significantly in September 2018 (-23.5 per cent) following the introduction of the WLTP testing regime.

Last month, all EU member states posted increases, except for Bulgaria. Four of the five major EU markets even recorded double-digit gains: Germany (+22.2 per cent), Spain (+18.3 per cent), France (+16.6 per cent) and Italy (+13.4 per cent). By contrast, in the United Kingdom market recovery was very limited (+1.3 per cent), as Brexit-related uncertainties continued to affect consumer confidence.

Over the first nine months of 2019, new car registrations were down 1.6 per cent compared to the same period the year before.

Despite demand recovering across the European Union in September, Germany (+2.5 per cent) was the only major market to post positive results so far this year. Spain (-7.4 per cent) saw the strongest drop, followed by the United Kingdom (-2.5 per cent), Italy (-1.6 per cent) and France (-1.3 per cent), ACEA said.

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