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During the first three quarters in 2009, 119,168 light buses were sold out by ten leading light bus manufacturers, down 1.5%. The overall light bus market is still on depression. In the first three years, light bus was extruded by low end large MPV and they were impacted by large minibus in 2008, and this year the financial crisis hit light bus hard. In the Europe original brands only Jiangling Quanshun increased by 11.6%, Nanjing IVECO fell nearly 10%. However, Japanese Haishi bus was not stable; petrol vehicles increased slightly while diesel vehicles saw completely declines.
Sales volumes of leading petrol light buses increased by 2% year on year in the first three quarters, while diesel fuel light buses decreased by 2%. The main reason is that customers identify Europe original diesel light bus and Japan original petrol light buses, and Japan original diesel fuel light bus has not been accepted. However, as joint ventures by FAW and GE, as well as Beiqi, Cummins and Benz finished, a series of significant changes are expected to happen in light bus power match, for example, hybrid and electric light buses may appear.
Under global financial crisis, seven large light bus manufacturers exported 8,912 units in total, almost half decreased year on year. But it’s already not bad for light bus builders to make this in such terrible import and export environment. All export business declined apart from Beiqi Foton, Nanqi and King Long. And Beiqi Foton View saw the biggest export volume while Golden Dragon and Jinke decreased the most. It predicts that the overall export volume in 2009 will be 50%.