The favorable government policies could propel the industry to greater heights next year, said trade sources. [China Daily]

China's automobile market continued its robust growth in October, with passenger vehicle sales clocking a year-on-year growth of 79.6 percent, and provided enough indications that the country is well on its way to occupy the top perch in the global automobile market.

Sales of cars, sports-utility vehicles, minivans and multi-purpose vehicles touched 923,154 units last month, said Rao Da, secretary-general of China Passenger Car Association on Friday in Shanghai.

During the first 10 months, passenger vehicle sales surged nearly 52.4 percent over the same period last year to 8.08 million units.

"The government's favorable tax policy and the eight-day National Day holidays spurred sales in October. The robust trend was also aided as vehicle manufacturers produced more popular models during the period and reduced the delivery time," said Rao.

"We are optimistic that the November figures would surpass that of October as sales normally peak toward the end of the year," he said.

China's automobile industry has been growing robustly since the end of last year and is now the most dynamic and promising market in the world.

"More importantly, by the end of November, total vehicles sales in China will surpass the 12-million-unit target, set by the government under its automobile industry restructuring plan of last year, some 25 months in advance," said Rao.

"We expect full-year automobile sales to touch 13.5 million with a year-on-year growth rate of 44 percent. That in turn, would make China the world's largest automobile market for the whole year."

Rao said if the government can continue its stimulus package for the automobile industry, the growth rate for the 2010 could reach 25 percent.

On Thursday, Zhu Hongren, spokesman of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said the government is considering extending the favorable tax policies and the subsidy for automobile purchases in rural regions to next year also. The policies were scheduled to end this year.

On October 28, the China Economic Monitoring Center and Sinotrust jointly released the 2009 Third Quarter China Automotive Industry Climate Index and pegged the indicator at 99.6 points in the third quarter of this year (2001=100), up 2.7 points over the second quarter, indicating that the automobile market has started to recover from the downturn.

(China Daily November 7, 2009)