These Charts Show Alarms Going Off for Turkey's Car Industry
A traffic jam fills a highway in the Levent business district of Istanbul, Turkey, on July 19, 2016.
Photographer: Ismail Ferdous/Bloomberg
Demand for cars and light commercial vehicles in Turkey fell to the lowest for the month of April in four years. A series of indicators in the charts below show why: interest rates are surging, loans are dropping and vehicles priced in foreign currencies are getting a lot more expensive as the lira hits new lows.
Car and light commercial vehicle sales fell 6.4 percent in April to 71,126 units, according to the Automotive Distributors’ Association of Turkey, or ODD. That was the biggest April plunge since 2014, when demand for automobile loans was at an all-time high, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the central bank.