Official: No Cars Imported By Algerians In 2017

The Renault, Hyundai and Volkswagen factories are expected to inject brand-new 100,000 vehicles in Algeria before December 31ST 2017, while a number of licensed car dealers announced yesterday that they will register a “blank year” in 2017 due to late issuance of import licenses for the current year until now.

If they are issued, they will not be able to import new vehicles before January 2018. These are agents who bring in their cars from Asia, a process which takes at least two months.

The situation of these dealership agents coincides with the registration of high orders of citizens at the level of the car assembling factories, as the latter are unable to cover the demands of the market, which deepens the difference between supply and demand, thus raising the prices of cars even more, despite the authorization of Trade Minister Mohamed Benmeradi, who confirmed yesterday, that the assembling factories alone will supply the market with around 100,000 new vehicles, by the end of the current year.

The former president of the Association of Automobile Agents and head of “IVAL” Group, Mohamed Bairi said that the Trade Ministry has not issued any decision until now and hasn’t informed them of any official data regarding the distribution of import licenses for 30,000 vehicles licensed for import in 2017, as previously announced by the former Minister of Trade, at a time when the relevant Ministry today is keeping silent about this outstanding file which has been put on the backburner by the authorities concerned.

 “There is still uncertainty surrounding the car import license file,” Mr Bairi told Echorouk. “We have not received any response yet, and the advent of a “blank year” is still taking place at the end of September without the issuing of the relevant licenses”, he said.

In the current year, until December 31, the Renault Algeria car assembling plant will produce 60,000 new cars, 60,000 other vehicles will be produced by the Sovak (Volkswagen) plant and another 15,000 by Hyundai Motors. 

This means that the Algerian market will be supplied with around 100,000 new cars thanks to the assembling factories established in our country.

In this context, the trade minister stressed that these factories are growing slowly but surely and that they need some time to prove their positive presence in the national market. He pointed out that by the end of this year, the Renault factory for instance will register a merger rate of 30 percent.