发布时间：2008.7

摘要

Countries covered: Bulgaria

Bulgaria’s bid to become a car-producing nation faces significant hurdles, according to BMI’s newBulgaria Automotives Report, as the newly created Litex Motors’ plan to assemble Chinese brand carsfaces more stringent EU safety regulations.

Litex Motors plans to assemble cars from imported completely knocked down (CKD) kits under licencefrom China’s Brilliance in the city of Lovech and distribute them on the Bulgarian, Romanian and Greekmarkets. No immediate information was available on the production capacity or the launch date. BMIbelieves that Bulgaria, with a skilled, low-wage labour force and well-situated geographically, is an ideallocation for a car assembly operation. So far Chinese brands have limited popularity in Europe and theirmodels have struggled to meet European regulations. Tighter EuroNCAP safety rules, due to beintroduced in 2009, are certain to delay the launch of many Chinese models on the EU market.

Nevertheless, Chinese carmakers are determined to break into the EU market, targeting the Balkansregion, where sales growth is particularly strong in the budget segment. BMI is confident that Chinesecarmakers will overcome the regulatory hurdles and will also take a significant share in the Balkansmarket if a Bulgarian plant is established. The local market is growing rapidly, but in itself will not beenough to sustain local production, requiring an export-oriented strategy. Given the size of the targetmarket, BMI expects initial production to be no more than 40,000 units per annum and probably closer to20,000 units, making the assembly line small scale. In order to be sustainable and profitable in the longterm, Litex Motors would need to achieve output of around 100,000 units, which would mean expandingits market to the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Bulgarian car market grew 24.3% y-o-y to 18,687 units in the first four months of 2008, according tothe Union of Car Importers in Bulgaria (SVAB). Meanwhile, truck and bus sales grew 90.4% to 1,432units. Growth in the Bulgarian market indicated that rising fuel prices and the global credit crunch had noimpact on demand for vehicles, with Opel and Toyota leading the market with shares of 12.3% and10.5% respectively. The results indicated that competition between brands is fierce, with Toyota knockedoff the top spot it enjoyed in the same period of 2007 and Opel accelerating its sales volumes. On thecommercial vehicle market, Iveco led sales with a 38.5% market share, followed by Mercedes with28.7%.

Most Bulgarian car importers forecast annual new car sales growth of 17-23% over the next five years.Toyota Balkans has delivered the most optimistic forecast, with 30-45% annual growth, leading to up to110,000 car sales by 2010. Given the performance seen in the first four months of 2008, BMI believesannual automotive sales will grow by 28.3% y-o-y in 2008, assisted by the rapid growth in commercialvehicle sales volumes. The car market will grow by around 20%, while the commercial vehicle marketwill grow 60%, according to BMI’s projections. However, growth rates are likely to diminish in the restof the forecast period due to a downturn in GDP growth, although this should be mostly counter-balancedby declining real interest rates and falling unemployment. By 2012, BMI expects automotive sales toexceed 114,000 units. In comparison with other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, this is still lowin per capita terms.

Bulgaria scores 40.3 points (out of a theoretical maximum of 100) in the BMI automotive businessenvironment rating this quarter, a 1.2 point rise over the previous quarter due to better than expected salesresults in the first few months of 2008 and an improvement in the country’s risk profile. This meansBulgaria lies 4.2 points behind Serbia and 1.2 points ahead of Croatia. This market’s stronger areasinclude a highly competitive environment and low market risk. Areas of particular weakness are theregulatory environment and the lack of assembly facilities. BMI expects the country’s score to improve inthe long term if the proposed car assembly plant gets under way. Much depends on the capacity andscheduled start-up, which are at present unknown.

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