Germany December car registrations up seven percent - VDA
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Car deliveries in Germany rose 7 percent in December against the same month a year before, returning Europe's largest auto market to annual growth after two years of shrinking sales, the VDA industry association said on Monday.
Overall car registrations rose to 229,700 autos in December and climbed 3 percent in 2014 as a whole to 3.04 million, the Berlin-based VDA said, confirming what industry sources had earlier told Reuters.
Recovering demand in Germany, whose auto market is dominated by homegrown marques Volkswagen , BMW and Mercedes , mirrors a similar trend in Spain and Italy, where annual sales rose 18.4 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively, industry data showed.
By contrast, annual registrations in France rose only 0.3 percent, after slumping 6.8 percent in December, the CCFA auto industry association said.
The German market however remains weak compared with previous years.
"The number of cars sold ... still lags the 2012 sales by around 45,000," Peter Fuss, analyst at accountants EY, said in a statement.
Commercial and fleet registrations boosted sales, while private purchases dropped to 1.02 million cars, the lowest level since 2000, Fuss said.
German car sales had fallen 4.2 percent in 2013 to 2.95 million vehicles, after shrinking 2.9 percent to 3.08 million deliveries in 2012, according to VDA data.
(Reporting by Edward Taylor; Editing by Christoph Steitz and David Holmes)
