smbet New high: PH vehicle sales seen to top 500,000 this year

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MANILA, Philippines — Vehicle sales in the Philippines are expected to reach a new high topping 500,000 units this year, with favorable economic conditions expected to boost the spending power of Filipinos.

Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) chair Alfred Ty, whose company has the largest local market share today at around 47 percent, said that prospects for the industry were “encouraging” this year.

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“The macro outlook is reasonably optimistic: [gross domestic product] is expected to exceed 6 percent; the financial sector remains sound with a growing consumer loan portfolio; [overseas Filipino workers’] remittances and [business process outsourcing] earnings are seen to expand,” Ty said at a company event in Taguig on Friday.

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The Toyota official also cited that the exchange rate was being managed well by the Philippine central bank and that government infrastructure spending was expected to continue.

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Additionally, Ty said election-related spending would also trigger incremental economic demand.

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“As a result, we are projecting sales to grow to over 500,000 units, half a million new cars—512,000 units to be exact—representing a sustained growth of 8 percent,” Ty said, referring to the sales goal of the local automotive industry.

The one-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR), which constitutes the benchmark for the most advantageous rates lenders can offer to businesses and households, was cut from 3.35 percent to 3.1.

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Vehicle sales in the country hit a new record high in 2024, reaching 467,252 units that year despite falling short of industry expectations, according to data from the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc. and the Truck Manufacturers Association.

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Sales volume stood at 429,807 units in 2023 and 352,596 units in 2022. In 2021, there were 268,488 units sold, while there were 223,793 units sold in 2020 and 369,941 in 2019.

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“Our volume sellers will continue to be on the Vios side, but also the Tamaraw side and then the Innova,” Ty said on the sidelines of the same event, when asked which vehicle segments would likely drive growth this year.

“The pickup [sector] will continue to deliver. So, we believe the commercial vehicles will continue to be stronger this year,” he added.

TMP president Masando Hashimoto, in the same event, said they were aiming to sell 20,000 of their new-generation Tamaraw vehicles this year.

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The automotive firm held the grand launch for the Toyota Tamaraw early last monthsmbet, marking the return of the classic multipurpose vehicle that had been sold in the ’90s to early 2000s.

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