The number of new cars introduced in traffic on Hungarian roads plummeted by more than half in April 2009 compared to the same period of last year, daily Nepszabadsag said on Tuesday.
However, the decline in the actual number of cars sold was less dramatic because German, Austrian and Slovak car dealers — attracted by the cheap forint — bought entire fleets in Hungary for export.
Such foreign purchases represented up to 80 percent of sales at many Hungarian car dealers during March and April, the paper said.
This was good for Hungarian dealers but not for the budget given the resulting loss in registration taxes and other road taxes. Registration tax revenues dropped by nearly half in the first quarter of this year to 11.2 billion forints from 22 billion forints in the same period of last year.
Central Statistical Office figures show that the average age of 3.1 million cars used in Hungary is 10.4 years. But there is little hope for improvement considering that the sale of small and medium sized cars representing 80 percent of the market fell the sharpest.