Márcio Querichelli, head of Iveco Latin America and responsible for South American markets, says the company is forecasting a recovery of truck sales to pre-pandemic volumes in Brazil in two to three years’ time in 2023.

An interview in November 2020 with Karl Deppen, president of Mercedes-Benz do Brasil and CEO for Latin America with T&BB’s South American correspondent, Jose Secco, shared some important details about the Brazilian market as well as providing an outlook for CV demand over the coming years.

Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus in December 2020 passed an export milestone of 5,000 commercial vehicles delivered to Colombia; the official 5,000th unit to be exported was a Constellation 19,360 V-Tronic truck.

The Brazilian bus and coach manufacturing sector sold 18,219 units in 2020, a decrease of 33% from the 27,193 vehicles registered in 2019, according to FENABRAVE.

ANFAVEA forecasts that 100,000 new trucks will be sold in Brazil in 2021, which is very close to the performance recorded just years ago in 2019.

Trucks was the only vehicle segment to record positive results for 2020 in the Colombian automotive sector with sales registrations totalling 16,663 units, an increase of 7% compared with 15,577 units sold in 2019 according to Andemos.

Production of trucks in 2020 totalled 90,936 units, some 19.9% lower than that recorded for 2019 of 113,476, according to figures supplied by ANFAVEA.

According to data released by ANAC commercial vehicles sales totalled 13,272 units, down by 18.8% compared with 16,342 units sold in 2019.

The market for bus and coach chassis slumped badly in 2020 to register 13,931 units, a 33.4% reduction in sales on 2019 registrations of 20,932 vehicles, one unit more than 7,000 vehicles fewer.

In 2020, the Uruguayan market registered 1,748 new trucks, 12.4% more than the 1,555 units sold in 2019 and only 224 buses, 38.5% fewer than the 364 units sold in the previous year.

The Peruvian market reached sales of 12,909 heavy commercial vehicles, a decrease of 22.5% compared with 2019, when it registered 16,650 vehicles, according to AAP.

Argentina in 2020 registered 10,562 heavy commercial vehicles (trucks and buses), a 9.9% decrease compared with the 11,725 units sold in 2019, according to data released by Acara.