MILANO – Ignazio Visco, the governor of the Bank of Italy, assured yesterday that the economic recovery has finally started. The car market, however, will have to wait a little longer: 142,730 cars were registered in Italy in May. The comparison with the same month of 2020, when the counter had stopped at 99,842 units, is only partially reassuring, because last year the dealers had recently reopened their doors after the total lockdown in the spring. In fact, if you look at May 2019, the last “good” year before the pandemic, the figure for this May 2021 is still in sharp decline, 27.9 percent less.
“The decline would have been even more serious if in the first months of this 2021 incentives had not been in place for the purchase of traditionally fueled cars with low CO2 emissions. The allocation for these incentives however ran out on 8 April. . For a few weeks the market will still be supported by the incentives booked until April 8. It is expected, however, that, starting from mid-June, the situation in the car market will worsen significantly with significant consequences both because, with the disappearance of the incentives , the further postponement of the replacement of cars for some time now at the end of the race will have serious effects on the environment and traffic safety, both because a further decline in sales will significantly affect the recovery of the economy given the strong weight of the auto sector and its induced on GDP “, says Gian Primo Quagliano, director of the Promotor study center.
“The May figure is significantly worse than the previous months of March and April”, note in a note Anfia, Unrae and Federauto, the associations representing the national automotive industries, foreign car manufacturers and dealers, noting how the rate of decline in May compared to the same month of 2019 (minus 27.9 per cent), both significantly higher than that of March (minus 12.7 per cent) and that of April (minus 17.1 per cent). If we compare the first five months of the year, the drop compared to 2019 is 19.3 per cent: in practice, one car has been lost for every five sold. The three associations underline that “the May data is numerical proof of the very short duration of the incentives for the 61-135 grams per kilometer of CO2 range, exhausted too soon to trigger a flying effect on our market”. Just today Anfia, Unrae and Federauto were heard in a hearing at the Budget Commission of the Chamber and expressed “the hope that in the conversion process of the Sostegni-bis decree law, adequate measures will be found to support the sector, favoring the renewal of a very old circulating park “.
The Draghi government has in fact left to Parliament the decision whether to introduce an amendment to refinance the incentives. “However, the funds available for the amendments are only 800 million and the needs to be met with the amendments are the most varied”, says Quagliano, stating that the government should “find adequate funds to refinance car incentives as soon as possible. with CO2 emissions contained between 61 and 135 grams per kilometer. Among other things, as it is easy to demonstrate, the allocation of 400 million mentioned above would be more than fully recovered with the VAT revenue of the cars sold in excess thanks to the incentives , and to this is added the certainty that without incentives the car market could collapse in the next few months with all that would ensue also in terms of GDP growth “.
“A further problem that contributes to worsening the conditions of the sector”, add Anfia, Unrae and Federauto, concerns the crisis in the supply of semiconductors, which is causing a delay in the delivery of new cars. In this regard, therefore, the associations of the automotive sector require that the limit currently envisaged within which to conclude a booking with Ecobonus is increased from 180 to 300 days, so as not to frustrate the effectiveness of the measure “.
As for the various manufacturers, in the first five months of the year the Japanese giant Toyota-Lexus (+104 percent), Audi (plus 83 percent) did better than the market (up 62 percent from January-May 2020). percent), Hyundai (+82 percent), Mini (+80) Jeep (+74), BMW (+72), Mercedes (+71) and Peugeot (+67). In line with the Fiat market (+63 per cent), Citroën-Ds (+61), Ford (+59), Renault (+29 per cent) and Volkswagen (+47 per cent) instead recovered slightly. Bad Alfa Romeo instead (minus 3 percent).
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