Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

Car imports in Azerbaijan have reduced from the beginning of the year.

From January to May, Azerbaijan imported 15,495 cars, the State Customs Committee reported. This is a 1.97 percent drop from the same period in 2014.

Of that total, 13,912 were passenger vehicles. This figure is drastically lower that the 27,444 passenger vehicles that were imported from January to May of 2014.

Economist Vugar Bayramov told AzerNews that the decrease in car imports in Azerbaijan has been felt since the middle of 2014.

Bayramov claims that this is due to the decision to shift to the Euro-4 ecological standard in April 2014, which forbids older cars from being imported into the country. Only cars from the EU manufactured from 2005, 2004 in the U.S., 2011 in China and Japan, 2006 in Korea, and 2009 in Turkey can be imported into the country.

This fact, according to Bayramov, in turn struck private dealers, since their customers were mainly those who purchased older, cheaper vehicles.

Another possible reason for the sharp decline in demand for cars, according to Bayramov, is a tightening of car loan lending. “Earlier, banks require 20% down payment for the car, but now the down payment is 40 or sometimes 50 percent, while for old produced cars this figure stands even at 60 percent,” he said.

The economist claimed that older vehicles are experiencing a drop in prices. Therefore, the price of cars produced between 2005 and 2009 also fell. “Our monitoring shows that the prices of old cars decreased by 7 percent,” he said.

On the other hand, prices rose for new cars as a result of the devaluation in the manat, the expert said. “The new cars prices changed only in manats, but remained the same in dollars.”

Generally, the expert said that the car market in Azerbaijan is experiencing a decline in prices that is expected to continue throughout the second half of the year.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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