Cambolive, Renault: We're starting to regain market share

Fabrice Cambolive, commercial manager of Renault, Nissan and Dacia brands in Romania, says the Romanian car market is set to stabilise in 2010, as 2009 will still be a difficult year. “The Romanian car market is in a crisis at this moment. The new rules in the Remat programme (car scrappage scheme i.e.) will allow for a sales increase, but we don’t see sales rebound in the second half,” Cambolive said. In the first five months of the year, car sales dropped by 53% to almost 65,000 units, according to APIA statistical data, while in the first stage of Remat programme 12,000 passenger cars were sold, almost half of the 20,000 earmarked quota. Owing to the car fleet renewal programme, Dacia saw its market share expand, in the context where the car market shrank by over 50%. In the first five months, the Romanian carmaker held a 28% share, while this May its share climbed to almost 31%, the highest level in the past two years. In the same period of last year, Dacia had a 26% market share. “We do not have a market share target for this year as the overall market volume cannot be estimated in the current conditions. We’re satisfied with what’s happened so far as we’ve started regaining market share”.