BEIJING (Reuters) -- China's vehicle sales will grow only 3 percent year-on-year in 2015, an industry association said today, in a major downward revision of its prediction for the year.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) in January said it expected combined sales for passenger and commercial vehicles to grow 7 percent to 25.1 million this year, compared with 6.9 percent in 2014.
The country's auto sales for the first half of 2015 grew at the slowest pace in at least six years as automakers added a stock market rout to their list of worries in the world's biggest car market.
Auto sales in China fell 2.3 percent in June from a year earlier to 1.8 million vehicles, CAAM said at a news briefing in Beijing today.
That's the slowest first six months since at least 2009, according to a Reuters review of monthly CAAM releases available from late 2008 onward, and falls below the 2.93 percent growth for the first half of 2012.
Automakers are facing headwinds including the slowest Chinese economy in a quarter century, a corruption crackdown that is weighing on sales of flashy cars, and a stock market rout that is pummeling the net worth of potential buyers.
