With the credit purchase scheme in Nigeria’s automotive system conspicusly missing and the middle class still finding it difficult to buy brand new cars, indications are rife that there are many automakers are still working silently on convincing many consumers to buy make their brands the most preferred brand.
Many of these automakers with exisiting plants many of which are either idle or producing far below the installed capacity according to BusinessDay privy informations are targeting West Africa’s 382-million people. But their challenge is finding banks that will offer loans to make new cars affordable.
Nigeria imports 1.2m vehicles in six years even as the country received a total of 1,216,131 used and new vehicles that were imported into the country between 2012 to 2017, a report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed.
According to the U.S Department of Commerce, Nigeria imported 82,180 units of vehicles from the U.S in 2018, as against 48,899 units in 2017. This means that the numbers of vehicle imported into Nigeria grew by 68% year-on-year 2018.
PWC estimates that 410,000 cars were imported into Nigeria in 2014, out of which 74 percent were used with passenger cars and commercial vehicles leading vehicle sales with a combined share of 61 percent.
In a country where over 70% of imports are second-hand, new car ownership is rare, said a dealership source who sells older models shipped from the US and other European countries at half the price of a new one.
