VietNamNet Bridge – The real estate, automobile and motorbike
markets, which have been gloomy for the last many months with the weak demand,
is now freezing in the “forsaken spirits” month.
Car, motorbike sellers sit idle
A salesman of a motorbike shop in
Thanh Xuan district in Hanoi complained that the sales dropped dramatically in
the last two weeks of August. He said some people come to ask about the prices
and sales promotion programs, while there have been very few buyers.
The last two weeks of August in
solar calendar coincided with the first days of the seventh month in lunar
calendar, which Vietnamese businessmen call the “forsaken spirits” month.
The month is always the lowest
sales season, when the demand decreases to the deepest low. Vietnamese people
are superstitious, believing that the owners would meet troubles or accidents,
if they buy motorbikes or cars in this month. Therefore, they would rather
delay the purchase plan until the next month, unless they need to buy things
urgently.
A salesman of Hong Hanh shop, a
sales agent of Yamaha, on Ba Trieu Street, said the sales dropped sharply by 40
percent in the first months of the year in comparison with the previous year,
and then plummeted dramatically by another 30 percent in the forsaken spirits’
month.
Hoang Manh Khanh, Director of
Vuong Phat Company Ltd in Hanoi, specializing in distributing import Sachs
motorbikes, said he does not think he can sell 100 products this month.
However, Khanh said he is not too
worried about the sales falls. A lot of people bought motorbikes in the first
two weeks of August already, before the forsaken month. Meanwhile, he expects
the demand to increase in the last days of September, when the forsaken month
ends and students officially start a new academic year, which means that the
demand would be higher.
Providing maintenance services
and replacing motorbike parts prove to be the main works of sales agents at
this moment. Therefore, only technicians still keep working, while business
development officers have been sitting idle.
The sales agents have been put on
tenterhooks, because motorbikes have been unsold and heaped up in their
storehouses. Meanwhile, they have anticipated that the sales would be very
gloomy for four weeks, despite the sharp price discounts.
An officer of Kuong Ngan Company,
the official distributor of many motorbike manufacturers, said sales agents
have been put into dilemma, since they have to continue receiving products from
the manufacturers for sales, while the sales have become stagnant. The sales
agents have to stably take more products for sale, or they would not be
provided products.
Car dealers seem to be in a
bigger distress than motorbike sellers. Ford’s, Toyota’s, Honda’s GM’s sales
agents in Hanoi said they sold only some products in the last two weeks
August witnessed the car prices
fall most dramatically. Renault Vietnam offered the price reductions of up to
200 million dong for some of its models, while Truong Hai Auto has offered the
price discount of 100 million dong.
Property market remains immovable
The seventh month of the lunar
year is also the taboo month for real estate traders. The owners of many real
estate trading floors complained that they have never seen such a gloomy
situation before.
Though commercial banks have
eased lending interest rates and loosened the requirements on borrowers, the
property market still has not warmed up yet.
Huynh Minh Thanh, Deputy General
Director of Hanco 9, said people would not make hasty decisions when seeking to
buy land and houses, the valuable assets. Therefore, they would rather wait
some more time and would only make decisions in the eighth month of the year.
Tran Thuy
Business & Investment Opportunities
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