‘20,000 units of new vehicles sold last year’

Chairman of the Automobile and Allied Services Group of Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Adekunle Jaiyesinmi, said the automobile industry was largely impacted by the high selling prices of vehicles, occasioned by the depreciation of the naira and fall in purchasing power of buyers last year.

Jaiyesinmi stated this recently and argued that the developments reduced total volume to an estimated 20,000 units, inclusive of trucks and buses.

Jaiyesinmi said most of the top players in the industry pulled high volumes from the Federal and state governments, which remained the highest contributors to the volume achieved in 2024.

He said: “We expect this to continue, especially with the huge improvement in the FAAC allocations of the three tiers of Government.”

Jaiyesinmi, who is Deputy Managing Director of CFAO Motors, said the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry has shifted demand to compressed natural gas (CNG) and electric vehicle alternatives. This development is expected to increase demand for buses and other commercial vehicles, especially with the Federal Government’s Presidential CNG Initiative plans to introduce an additional fleet of commercial vehicles on the road to aid its poverty alleviation programme.

He said the unveiling of the N20 billion consumer credit fund by the Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation and the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), to enable Nigerians to purchase locally-assembled vehicles, should stimulate the economy and foster growth, especially in the automobile industry.

He noted that other factors that could propel improvement in the industry volume are a stable FX market, reduced inflation, revitalizing the purchasing power of the consumers and the envisaged improvement in the demand for corporate fleets.