Taking advantage of official commodity-tax reductions for new-car purchases, most local automakers in Taiwan posted rising sales in November.

The government will stop subsidizing NT$30,000 (about US$923) for each 2,000cc-or-less new car sold by the end of the year.

Hotai Motor Co. Ltd., general agent of locally assembled and imported Toyota and Lexus cars, registered revenue of NT$7.96 billion (US$244.9 million) in November, up 252.99% year-on-year (YoY), while Yulon Nissan Motor Co. (Nissan and Infiniti) and China Motor Corp. (Mitsubishi) enjoyed YoY revenue increases in November of 207% and 145%, respectively.

To meet the last wave of strong demand this year, industry sources said, most automakers have extended daily work hours by three and some have canceled weekend offs.

Automakers forecasted that overall new-car sales in Taiwan will exceed 40,000 vehicles in December, up about 30% from November for a new high this year.

Despite seeing quite busy production lines over the past two months, Cheng Kuo-rong, president of Yulon Motor Co., local assembler of Nissans, regrets the governmental decision to halt new-car subsidies for the incentive has just generated some effect. Chen said that, with no more subsidies, new-car sales in Taiwan will be uncertain in 2010. Despite flooded with orders recently, he explained, automakers still dare not recruit new employees but only hire temporary workers.

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