German car exports up 26 percent on year in June, more than 40 percent in year’s 1st half

German car exports up 26 pct in June

BERLIN — German car exports were up by a quarter in the year through June and nearly by half in the first six months of 2010, an industry group said Friday, predicting slower but still-healthy growth for the rest of the year.

Germany’s automakers exported 395,000 cars last month, a 26 percent increase compared with June 2009, the VDA group said. Between January and June, exports were up 44 percent to nearly 2.16 million cars.

Germany is home to car makers including Daimler AG, Porsche SE, Volkswagen AG and BMW AG.

VDA’s president, Matthias Wissmann, said he expects export growth to be a bit slower in the second half — “but we are confident of boosting car exports for the whole of 2010 by at least a fifth and so being able to increase production at home by at least 10 percent.”

Production was up 10 percent on the year in June, with 524,700 cars rolling off assembly lines. First-half production was up 23 percent to nearly 2.85 million.

Strong demand abroad, driven by the Chinese and U.S. markets among others, has helped balance out slower sales at home after a popular German government car-scrapping program expired last year.

New registrations of cars — both German-made and imported — were down 32 percent in June at 289,400, the latest in a string of declines.

Some 1.47 million cars were registered in Germany in the year’s first half, a 29 percent drop, VDA said.

“There is no question that foreign business is the motor of this industry,” Wissmann said, though he cautioned that this year’s export growth “must be seen against the background of the very weak months last year.”

Annual growth going forward will be slower because a “turning point on export markets” was reached in summer 2009, he added.

The sales decline in Germany is in line with expectations after last year’s surge, and new registrations for the full year are likely to be down by about a quarter, Wissmann said.