Naamsa The Automotive Business Council has issued a correction to South Africa’s new-vehicle export numbers from 2024.
“Following a comprehensive data verification exercise that took slightly longer than expected, considering over 21 million sales records in total, with 2024 accounting for more than 800,000 of those records, we discovered that two of our members had erroneously reported sales and export figures for their various models for the reporting month of December 2024 and previous months,” said Mikel Mabasa, Naamsa CEO.
“In light of this, we have corrected these errors to ensure that accurate information is shared with the South African market and all other interested parties across the automotive value chain.”
Earlier this month, Naamsa reported that vehicle exports dropped to 308,830 units in 2024, reflecting a staggering contraction of 90,764 units or 22.8% in comparison to 2023.
However, these figures have now been corrected to 390,845 exports over the course of last year, a much less alarming drop of 2.2%.
The missing 82,015 units were chalked up to in-house calculation errors by two of Naamsa’s members. The council represents the interests of all major vehicle exporters in South Africa, including BMW, Ford, Isuzu, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota, and VW.
While Naamsa didn’t reveal which of these members were responsible for the oversight, Engineering News reports that the main culprit was VW Group Africa (VWGA), the country’s biggest auto exporter.
VWGA erroneously reported a large portion of its vehicle exports by vehicle identification number between March and December 2024.
VWGA spokesperson Andile Dlamini told the publication that the oversight has since been corrected, with a double verification process subsequently put in place.
Car sales correction
New-vehicle sales figures for December 2024 as well as the entirety of the year have likewise been corrected.
Naamsa initially reported a total of 41,273 units for domestic new-vehicle sales in December 2024, however, this has been revised downward by 181 units to reflect a corrected total of 41,092 units.
This adjustment results in an increase of 779 units, or a 1.9% gain, compared to the 40,250 vehicles sold in December 2023.
Sales of medium commercial vehicles for December 2024 reported at 648 units have now been adjusted upwards with an increase of 10 units to a corrected 658 units.
Similarly, sales for heavy commercial vehicles and buses reported at 1,714 units have risen by 1 unit to a corrected 1,715 units.
This correction also confirms a gain of 56 units, or 9.3% in the medium commercial segment; and a loss of 218 units, or 11.3%, in the heavy commercial vehicles and buses segment, in December 2024, respectively.
“Naamsa will continue to collaborate with all its members and partners to safeguard the credibility and integrity of our data,” said Mabasa.
“Maintaining high data accuracy ensures that all our records and diverse datasets meet the criteria for reliability and trustworthiness, enabling them to be utilised across the market to support policy development, decision-making, and various applications. This will enhance the market’s trust and confidence in our data.”
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