The Malaysian commercial vehicle market over 2 tons gvw continued to expand in the first quarter of 2023, by almost 13% after growing by over 20% a year earlier.

The Philippine market for commercial vehicles over 2 tons gvw shrank by more than 3% in the first quarter of 2023 after growing by 12% in the same period of last year.

Sales of commercial vehicles over 2 tons gvw in East Asia’s seven main markets, excluding China, fell by over 2% year-on-year to 372,543 units in the first quarter of 2023 after growing just 1.6% to 364,641 units in the fourth quarter of last year.

Economic growth in the country accelerated to 4.5% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2023, up from a multi-decade low of 3.0% in the whole of last year, as the country began a gradual recovery from the Covid pandemic.

This fall was sharper than the overall economy. Economic growth slowed to 3.3% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2023 from 5.9% in the previous quarter and 8% in the whole of 2022.

The strong sales growth came about despite economic growth continuing to slow sharply in the first quarter to 0.8% year-on-year from 1.4% in the fourth quarter and 2.6% in the whole of last year.

The market continued to decline despite a pick-up in economic growth to 2.7% year-on-year in the first quarter after slowing to 1.4% in the fourth quarter of last year.

Commercial vehicle sales in the first four months of 2023 were up by almost 9% after declining by 40% in the same period of last year.

Q4 of FY 2023 sales showed few signs of abatement in the increasing sales in the segment across India in FY 2023.

India's light truck sales increased by more than 100,000 units in FY2022-23 from the previous fiscal year.

Strong demand for rigid trucks sees reguistrations grow by 30% across India.

The Covid-19 pandemic decimated bus and coach travel demand in India starting two to three years' ago - the market now for public transport is in recovery.