Imports of commercial vehicles fell last month

Sales of imported commercial vehicles plunged 38 percent last month from a year earlier amid slower economic growth, a local automobile association said Tuesday.

The number of newly-registered imported commercial vehicles fell to 283 units in December from 390 a year ago, the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association (KAIDA) said in a statement.

“The construction industry faces a slowdown as the government pushes for regeneration projects in residential areas instead of building new apartments or homes. This is driving down demand for commercial vehicles,” a spokeswoman for Volvo Trucks Korea said.

Imported commercial vehicles are widely viewed as being more upmarket than domestically produced rivals and offer more choices for users.

For the whole of 2018, the number of imported commercial vehicles sold in Korea declined 1.6 percent to 4,394 units from 4,464 a year earlier, the statement said.

Major imported commercial vehicle brands are MAN, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo Trucks, Scania and Iveco.

There are three kinds of trucks. Two of them are regarded as commercial vehicles, but the third, referred to as a dump truck, is classified as construction equipment.

KAIDA began to compile sales data for imported commercial vehicles in January 2017.

Yonhap