Honda Malaysia Sales Down 52% YoY in May-July 2021 – New Model Production Affected

The extended COVID-19 lockdown is impacting the automotive industry in Malaysia quite a bit. Honda Malaysia, for one, just revealed that its sales between May to July 2021 are down 52% compared to the same period last year.

“Honda Malaysia saw a decline of 52% in car sales for the year-on-year period of May to July 2021. We sold about 5,700 units in this period compared to close to 12,000 units sold in the same period last year when the country was under CMCO and RMCO,” said the MD and CEO of Honda Malaysia, Madoka Chujo.

On top of that, Honda Malaysia said that its new model production has been affected by the lockdown too. Chances are, this is a reference to the local debut of the 2022 Honda Civic, which was supposedly set to happen in Q3 2021.

“The prolonged business closure has impacted Honda Malaysia’s new model production due to no testing conducted in the manufacturing facility,” Chujo added.

In an effort to speed up the rate of COVID-19 vaccination locally, Honda Malaysia also said that it is aiming to get all of its associates inoculated with the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by mid-August 2021.

As per the government’s guideline, most of the automotive sector will only be allowed to resume operation in the second phase of the National Recovery Plan (NRP). At the moment, the Klang Valley area is still under the first phase of the NRP, with increasingly high COVID-19 cases reported daily.

That being said, ease of restrictions for fully vaccinated individuals will be announced by the government soon, so there is a chance the automotive sector (with fully vaccinated staff) can resume operations in the near future.