Imported commercial car sales jump 12 pct in April

SEOUL, May 28 (Yonhap) -- Sales of imported commercial vehicles here jumped 12 percent in April on strong demand for dump trucks, a local automobile association said Tuesday.

The number of newly registered imported commercial vehicles rose to 526 units last month from 469 a month earlier, according to the data from the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association (KAIDA).

KAIDA began to add sales figures of dump trucks to its existing commercial car sales data in January. Previously, most monthly sales data for imported commercial vehicles didn't include dump truck figures.

For the whole of 2018, the number of imported commercial cars that didn't include dump trucks sold in Korea fell 1.6 percent to 4,394 units from 4,464 a year earlier.

There are three kinds of trucks. Two of them, covering the areas of cargo and tractor-trailers, are regarded as commercial vehicles, but the third, referred to as dump trucks, falls under the construction equipment designation.

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

Imported commercial vehicles currently account for a large percentage of the domestic commercial vehicle market, but their exact market share has not been released.

The five major imported commercial car brands -- MAN, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo Trucks, Scania and Iveco -- sell trucks, buses and vans.

kyongae.choi@yna.co.kr
(END)