Mexican auto exports jump in August, output up slightly

MEXICO CITY: Mexican auto exports, excluding those from carmaker Nissan Motor Co Ltd, jumped in August, while auto production ticked up slightly, the country's automotive industry association AMIA said on Monday.

Mexico produced 369,543 autos in August, an increase of 0.4 percent compared with the same month last year, AMIA said.

In total, 2,617,330 autos were produced in Latin America's No. 2 economy in the first eight months of the year, a rise of just 0.1 percent from the same period of 2017, the data showed.

Nissan stopped disclosing its export figures in Mexico earlier this year. Excluding the Japanese automaker, exports rose in August by 15.4 percent year-on-year to 281,805.

Domestic auto sales fell by 5.3 percent on the year to 118,715 during August, the figures showed. In the January-August period, auto sales were down by 7.8 percent to 913,726.

Guillermo Rosales, deputy director general of the Mexican Association of Automobile Distributors (AMDA), told a news conference that a loss of purchasing power and higher interest rates were putting downward pressure on domestic auto sales.