Used car market booms as Nigeria’s imports rise by 100%

As automakers and dealers of new vehicles in Nigeria are lamenting poor sales, used car market is experiencing a boom as the latest report from the National Bureau of Statistics has revealed.

The report covering the third quarter of this year showed that Nigerians spent about N195bn on fairly used cars, motorcycles and auxiliary cycles between July and August this year.

Specifically, it states that a total of N194.8bn was spent on the imports of fairly used vehicles, motorcycles and cycles fitted with an auxiliary motor.

This shows an increase of over 100 per cent compared to N83bn spent on used cars sourced from the United States (N79.66bn) and Italy (N4.33bn) in the previous quarter.

The revelation came amid calls for patronage of Nigeria-assembled vehicles in line with a presidential directive to all government’s ministries, departments and agencies.

The country has indigenous car makers with notable names such as Innoson Motors, Nord Automobile and Stallion Motors.

The NBS said, “Manufactured goods mainly imported were ‘used vehicles, with diesel or semidiesel engine, of cylinder capacity 2500cc’ from the United States of America and Italy worth N75.15 billion and N3.27 billion, followed by ‘Filters’ from China and United Arab Emirates valued at N56.66 billion, N0.99 billion respectively