After years of double-digit growth, the market for motorcycles, which in 2008 showed a slight slowing, shrank sharply in the first quarter. This is reflected in the drop in apparent consumption, which contracted by 62% in the first three months of 2009 compared to the first quarter last year. While a slowdown was already appreciated in the market for motorcycles in 2008, growing 9% over 2007, this retraction, so far in 2009, with a change in trend could continue for the rest of the year. The calculation of apparent consumption arises from computing the national production plus imports and subtracting motor vehicles units for export. So, the rest is for domestic apparent consumption, or sold to the local market or stocks increases. It is also clear that since the end of 2008 is undergoing a process of stocks, so the drop in sales could be less pronounced as seen from the demand side. Imports, including CKD units completed and for local assembly representing 93.5% of the market, fell 59.1% from March 2008 to March 2009, the month in which imported the least number of units of the last three years.
Since September last year-year declines were observed. Since 2007, the sector has seen an increase in the average prices of the bikes under the general basket of consumer prices and car market. The prices of motorcycles have grown just 6.9% between December 2007 and March 2009, well below the 24.2% increase in the CPI (as abeceb. Com) and almost half of the price increase cars in the same period. Recently, however, market prices of bikes have a higher increase (5.1%) from June 2008 until March 2009.
The CPI and the auto market grew 10.3% and 0.8% respectively over the same period. The rise in prices of jet is mainly explained by the depreciation of the peso against the dollar. Due to the large share of imports in the market, a domestic currency depreciation has a direct impact on prices in the sector.