New car sales bounce

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The ABS has released April new car sales and they show good growth up 2.4% up in May from April and 22.4% year on year. Here’s the month on month chart:

Of course, there always a catch and today it’s a big one, most obvious in the year on year chart:

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See that last big spike? It’s the reverse of last year’s big tumble, which resulted from delays emanating from Asia, as the ABS says:

The flooding which occured in Thailand from June 2011 may have had an impact on new vehicle sales in Australia due to associated delays in delivery of Thai manufactured vehicles and vehicle parts. The impacts from the flooding is no longer affecting the supply of new motor vehicles to Australia from Thailand.

The earthquake and tsunami which occurred in Japan in March 2011 had an impact on the number of new vehicle sales in Australia in mid 2011 due to a reduction in supply. These events are no longer affecting the supply of new vehicles, with Japanese motor vehicle production now returning to levels observed before March 2011.

As new motor vehicle sales are influenced by a range of factors, it is not possible to quantify the specific impacts of these events.

So, best to take these results with grain of salt for now.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.