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Interview: Spain's vehicle production aims at climbing positions in world ranking

Xinhua, March 25, 2016 Adjust font size:

Spain's vehicle production aims at climbing positions in world ranking, David Barrientos, director of communication at the Spanish Association of Car Manufacturers (ANFAC) told Xinhua in an interview.

Spain ranked eighth in 2015 when it came to vehicle manufacturing according to the International Organization of Motor Vehicles Manufacturers (OICA) and aims at gaining a further lead in the following years after overcoming Brazil in 2015.

"Spain climbed a position in 2015 going from ninth to eighth, overcoming a very important country, Brazil," Barrientos said, emphasizing that China continued to lead the ranking, manufacturing a total of 24,503,326 vehicles in 2015.

According to Barrientos, three factors have led Spain to having a better performance in the sector: Spain manufacturers different kinds of vehicles with different technologies (hybrid, gas, electric), it exports to more than 120 countries (such as South Korea, Germany, the United States and China) and the government's financial aid helped boost domestic demand in times of economic crisis.

"One of the key aspects is diversity and the fact that we export vehicles to more than 120 countries," Barrientos said, adding that "with no doubt, one of the main destinations over the last years, especially, in 2015 is China."

Spain exported 2,273,732 vehicles in 2015, which meant an 11.46 percent increase when compared with a year earlier.

Within the domestic market, the Spanish government helped boost demand by implementing financial aid plans for consumers and car dealers.

"Thanks to these plans, there was an increase of production in our factories which lead us to manufacture 2.7 million vehicles in 2015," Barrientos pointed out.

The country manufactured 2,733,201 vehicles last year, which meant a 13.7-percent rise when compared with 2014. Spain had not reached this figure since the economic crisis began, when in 2007 a total of 2.9 million vehicles were manufactured.

In 2016, ANFAC expects to produce 2.8 million vehicles bringing its production closer to Mexico, where 3.5 million vehicles were manufactured in 2015.

"In Spain's automobile sector we are ambitious and we think we can expect more, in fact, we think our three million plan will be achieved in 2017, but we are setting a new goal that is increasing production of vehicles, we think we can climb positions at the global ranking," Barrientos said. Endit