Special Year End 2014 Feature: "2014 exceeded all expectations." This is the most popular statement repeated by all workers in the local automotive sector, especially as the Egyptian Automotive Market Information Council (AMIC) is close to recording a historical figure for the year's total sales. The number may amount to selling 300,000 or more different kinds of vehicles. Khaled Hosni, AMIC's official spokesman, told Daily News Egypt that the total volume of sales reached 280,725 vehicles until the end of November 2014. By the end of December, it may reach even more than 300,000 vehicles, and this is what the market awaits when the final report on market sales is issued at the end of January. However the indicators confirmed that it will bypass this figure, and announces 2014 as the best year of sales in the last five years. Hosni said that this figure is higher than that of 2010, which recorded about 248,917 in sales; the highest number that had been recorded in the past five years. In spite of all the major challenges faced throughout the year, domestic auto sales achieved a major increase in recorded sales, exceeding 142,773 items, compared to the sale of 137,952 imported cars. Experts said that this breakthrough in local vehicle sales is attributed to the government, which bought a large number of commercial vehicles for the police sector, as well as other vehicles. It has also received more than 300 new buses to be added to the Egyptian public transportation fleet. Experts also pointed out that the Suez Canal Project has also played a key role in increasing the demand on trucks and heavy digging machinery. The report suggests that vehicles sales are over the eleven months of the last year reached 196,941 cars. It is also expected that the total sales amount up to 200,000 vehicles by the end of December. According to the report, a total number of 142,773 vehicles were produced locally, while 137,952 were imported from abroad. Sales of buses reach as high as 30,432 buses during the same period. It suggests that it will reach 30,640 busses at the final sales report. The total number of domestic manufactured buses is 17,461 against 12,971 imported ones during the same period of the last year. The final vehicle sales report for the year 2014 is expected to be issued by the end of January 2015.
