It has been said that the Malaysian economy hasn’t fully recovered from the negative impact brought about by the pandemic, but new car sales seem to say otherwise. On June 20, when announcing that there would be no further extension to the two-year long sales tax exemption for new vehicles, finance minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz indicated that the automotive industry had a delivery backlog of around 264,000 vehicles.
That number is now believed to have swelled to more than 500,000 units, says a Hong Leong Investment Bank research analyst. As reported by Berita Harian, HLIB Research analyst Daniel Wong said in a research note that it was estimated that the industry’s current backlog of orders had now jumped to more than half a million units.
That doubling is the result of the surge in bookings made last month, when buyers rushed to showrooms to take advantage of the allowance given by the government for the SST exemption to be applied to any new vehicle booked by June 30 and registered before March 31 next year.
In the note, Wong said despite the high level of outstanding orders expected to aid the recovery of the total industry volume (TIV) until the end of the year, the TIV is expected to slow in 2023.
Long wait times are expected across the board for just about every car brand. Perodua, which collected 25,100 bookings on June 30 alone (its highest ever), has come out and said that its buyers can expect a waiting time of six to seven months, depending on the model.
It will be longer for quite a few of them – in an internal document issued earlier this month that was sighted by this publication, the company listed out expected wait times for its model range post-June 30 to dealers. In it, it was stated that the waiting period for higher-end Axia variants is now around 10.5 to 11 months, while that for the upper-end Bezza stretches to around 12.5 to 13 months.
Meanwhile, Honda announced at the launch of the new HR-V that bookings for the SUV had gone past the 20,000 mark and that the waiting period for one was now over 12 months. Elsewhere, Mercedes-Benz Malaysia has also indicated that the waiting period for its models have now stretched to around six months.
In many cases, there’s nothing that can be done but wait, though for high demand models the race is surely on to see if outstanding orders can be delivered by the end-of-March cut-off point. So, did you book a new vehicle before the end of the SST exemption, and do you have an idea when your ride will get to you?
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Even though our car prices are supposedly quite high when compared to some other countries that aren’t Singapore, this is still a surprising figure to me. This just goes to show how much Malaysians are dependent on their cars — be it for show-off reasons or practical. Obviously this isn’t scalable moving forward, KL is already jam-packed as-is with crazy traffic jams during rush hour.
Rakyat has much confidence in how things are run today up to 500,000 majority wei! Kudos to BetterNation!
#KeluargaMalaysia #BetterNation #GE15Win
Ekcelli rakyat got zero confidence in BN built public transportation. No to BN ..mrt, lrt, monorel & bas rapid. This is the ultimate vote from rakyat to throw out BN Baziran nasional rejim. 64yrs of korup shambolic ruling, and soon Rakyat would witness the 1st Malaysia PM ended up in jail …jibby racqzakq. PRU15 BN be end
Hidup umno
Axia waiting period 11 month?
Speculation is that there will be a new Axia model next year. Better just wait for the new model lah.
The number can be fake as car makers are offering a super low booking fee with a refund policy! Many might just order and see look see look! By the end Mar 2023, maybe only 200K units will be delivered and registered!
20-30% are multiple bookings by same person.Less out 20% of loan rejections..So actual approved deliveries will be 50-60%of total bookings.
For the time being dun need to launch new models until nex year, take tis as a cooling period to concentrate for the current booking to deliver the cars.
Expect super traffic jams next year!
Enjoy the jam
People can afford new cars are majority T20. Others are still struggle to buy groceries to feed their family.
bs…most malaysian still got a lot of miney
Malaysia government has no determination to control traffic congestion issues. The only way is to make sure only those higher income can own car to reduce the number of cars. If you do not afford, just take public transport or just motorbike. Why 30years ago, we do not need car to work but now we must have car? Unless you admit that Malaysia is moving backward. I still remembers many of ny classmates, their parents have no class, including my parents. Now, our living std has never raised but we are being push all those cheap cars, with no deposits needed, up to 9 yrs tenure of loan.
This is always the issue for developing nation when the standar of living is improving. More people just able to afford car than last time. Is a result of people moving forward, noy backward.
And the city has grown bigger as well. Last time we stay near where we work, now we could stay in kajang and work in the city.