HANOI, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's total automobile sales expanded 19.5 percent on-year to 202,567 units between January and August, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association said on Thursday.
Specifically, sales of passenger cars grew 31.4 percent to 147,778 units, those of commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses dropped 1.6 percent to 50,991, and those of special-purpose vehicles plunged 27.7 percent to 3,798.
In August alone, 21,483 automobiles were sold in the Vietnamese market, down 19 percent against July, and up 4 percent against August 2018.
Over 288,600 automobiles were sold in the Vietnamese market in 2018, up nearly 6 percent against 2017. Specifically, the sale of locally-assembled automobiles rose 11 percent, and that of imported vehicles dropped over 6 percent, said the association.
In the first eight months of this year, Vietnam spent over 4.9 billion U.S. dollars importing completely-built automobiles and components for assembly, seeing a year-on-year surge of 60.3 percent.
Specifically, the country imported 95,969 completely-built automobiles worth more than 2.1 billion U.S. dollars, up 229 percent in volume and up 205.5 percent in value, according to its General Statistics Office.
