Car Dealers Now Diversifying As Most Nigerians Can No Longer Afford Cars
In an interview conducted by TheCable with a car dealer Nicakelv CEO reveals that car dealer are currently diversifying as most Nigerians can no longer afford cars.
In this interview, TheCable’s ADERONKE ONI AND VICTOR EJECHI spoke with Kelvin Lawson, a car dealer and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nicakelv International Limited, about the challenges in the industry, particularly how fluctuation in the foreign exchange (FX) rate is affecting the auto industry.
Read the full interview below :
TheCable: The FX rate has greatly affected Nigerians. How has it affected you specifically in business?
Lawson: The same amount you spent on an imported, fairly used Camry two years ago can’t buy a registered Nigerian-driven Camry now. It’s not a joke
Lawson: The dollar is the driving force of this business because we buy in dollars and we sell in naira. Looking at the economy generally, everything has been going in an upward trend. The way inflation is, it is catapulting almost every month. The dollar is going up almost monthly, if not weekly, and the higher the dollar, the higher the sales and the higher the purchases. So, it has affected me very badly, in the sense that before this dollar/naira thing, the same amount you used to buy two cars two years ago is not enough to buy the same car now. That is how bad it is. It’s not just in the car business; it is the general economy. It is crashing down.
For instance, three years ago, Corolla, the popular car used for car-hailing, we were selling for like N3 million, N3.5 million. Last year, it came to N4 million, N5 million. That same Corolla is selling for N8 million now. In some cases, N9 million. Camry 07, 08, I’ve sold them for N2 million plus here, N3 million, and it started going up. That same Camry 08, 09 is selling for N11 million, N12 million.
The economy is affecting car dealers and importers very seriously. What does that mean? It means that importers that could bring in three or four cars before can barely bring in one with the same amount. As it is affecting us here locally, it’s affecting us at the buying points in America because the price has actually shot up. The dollar is affecting everything. I bought it last week at N1,672.
How do you equate that with what we are doing? It’s serious; it’s limiting the flow of funds; it’s limiting the flow of the vehicles that we buy. It’s also affecting greatly the people patronising us. How many people have the strength to buy cars now? So you see that people have diverted from buying tokunbo cars to registered cars.
#TheCable
