Vehicle sales in Turkey have declined for a fourth month in a row, May data released on June 2 by the Automotive Distributors’ Association (ODD) shows.

Sales of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) fell by 9% y/y to 85,422 units in the month. Across January-May, sales also declined 9% y/y, falling to 317,500.

Turkey’s passenger car market contracted 11% y/y to 65,799 units in May, while the decline in LCV sales was a milder 2% y/y to 19,623.

Over January-May, passenger car sales were down 10% y/y to 239,760 while LCV sales contracted 3% y/y to 77,740.

In April, Hayri Ece, secretary general of the ODD, said that the decline in Turkey's automotive sales was likely to deepen in the second quarter from the substantial fall in the first quarter due to foreign exchange impacts on prices.

Auto production in Turkey increased by 21% y/y to 149,020 units in April, only slightly down on the previous month’s 23% y/y rise, data from the Automotive Manufacturers’ Association (OSD) showed on May 11.

In the first four months of 2017, auto production moved up 22% y/y to a total of 573,239 units while passenger car output rose by 42% y/y to 402,094 units.

Turkey’s auto export revenues jumped 15% y/y to $2.34bn in April while export revenues showed a 22% y/y increase over January-April to stand at $9.42bn.

Output is expected to rise by 11% to more than 1.65mn units this year. Exports are set to increase in value to $27bn in 2017 from last year’s $24.2bn, but the domestic automotive market is heading for a sales volume contraction of 11%.

In 2016, the country’s automotive output increased by 9% to 1.49mn units, with passenger car production rising 20% y/y. A total of 1.01mn vehicles were sold in the year - a figure that was almost unchanged from the previous year - while sales of passenger cars increased by 4% to 756,938 units.