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Year-on-year, vehicle sales for the first eight months, including passenger cars and commercial vehicles, increased by 4.1% to 12.47 million units.
Sales of passenger cars saw significant increases in August, and have now registered growth of more than 10% year-on-year for the past five months.
More than 1.22 million passenger car units were sold in August, up by 8.8% month-on-month, while 276,300 commercial vehicles were sold, up by 6.6% month-on-month.
Commercial vehicle sales during January-August 2012 were 2.52 million, down by 8.9% year-on-year.
China’s auto market slowed down in 2011 after the government ended its incentive scheme for purchases of some types of cars.
“The mild growth during the first eight months could only give limited support to the upstream steel industry, as its end-user industries – including real estate and shipbuilding – saw big drops,” a trader in Shanghai said.
About 60% of the steel demand in China comes from the construction industry.