MADRID, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- Spain's automobile sector expects to produce 3 million vehicles in 2018, a level reached some ten years ago, just before the 2008 financial crisis in Europe seriously hit the sector, according to ANFAC, Spain's Association of Car Manufacturers.
Adolfo Randulfe, Director of Communication at ANFAC, revealed the figure in an interview with Xinhua.
The sector expects to end the year of 2017 with around 2,800,000 vehicles manufactured, Randulfe said. Data showed that in the first eleven months of the year, a total of 2,673,909 vehicles were manufactured in Spain, down by 2.7 percent from the same period of 2016.
For 2018, apart from manufacturing some 3 million vehicles, Spain's automobile sector expects to increase the sales of alternative vehicles which use alternative energies, such as electricity, natural gas, liquefied gas. Alternative vehicles' market share is still very low in Spain.
In 2007, the sector produced 2.9 million vehicles, meaning a 4.04 percent rise year-on-year. The following year, the sector was hit by the crisis and production sharply dropped to 2.5 million, which meant a 12 percent fall when compared with a year earlier.
Vehicle production continued falling the following years, especially in 2009 when it fell by 14.6 percent year-on-year. However, in 2013, it rose by 9.3 percent year-on-year and the sector manufactured 2.6 million vehicles.
The automobile sector has played a very important role when it comes to Spain's economic recovery, also thanks to the plans implemented by the Spanish government to boosting the sales in times of crisis.
"Calculating in general and including production, distribution and other services," Randulfe pointed out, "the automobile sector in Spain would represent almost 10 percent of the country's GDP."
