Baltic, Car market, Good for Business, Transport

Lithuanian market sustained its rapid growth and kept the second place in the region (+18.4% to 8’170 units). Latvian market was the only that suffered a decline and was left behind its neighbours by the total volume (-3.8% to 5’120 units). Meanwhile Estonia managed to increase its growth pace and secured the first place by volume (+15.7% to 8’911 units). 

Estonia kept its position as the largest market in the Baltic States, accounting for 40.1% of the total, while Lithuania and Latvia respectively had 36.8% and 23.1% shares. When calculated per 1’000 inhabitants, Lithuania managed to overtake Latvia: its index was 2.9, while Latvian one was 2.6 and Estonia is clear leader here with 6.8. 

There were 19’492 passenger cars (+11.7%) and 2’709 light commercial vehicles (+9.0%) registered in the Baltic States in II quarter 2017. The best performing makes (brands) were Toyota (3’196 units), Volkswagen (2’583 units), Skoda (2’190 units), Fiat (1’638 units) and Renault (1’368 units). The most popular models were Fiat 500 (986 units), Skoda Octavia (834 units), Volkswagen Passat (746 units), Nissan Qashqai (663 units) and Volkswagen Golf (581 units).

New light-vehicle registrations in the Baltic States increased 11.1% to 40’184 in the first half 2017. Trend was similar to II quarter: Lithuania was the fastest-growing market (+18.3% to 14'395 units), Latvia was the only one that declined (-0.9% to 9’630 units) and Estonia remained the largest one (+13.1% to 16’159 units). 

The research is based on the common European-wide methodology, which considers a vehicle as being new only when its first-overall and first-in-country registration dates are the same. It counts so-called brutto volume paying no regard to any kind of short-term registrations and de-registrations which may follow up, and these are the subjects of another dedicated research.