Weekly Report - 28 April 2011 (WR-11-17)

ARGENTINA | Tourism and vehicle sales. The forecast of vehicle sales to external markets continues to be very positive, but the government's emphasis on trying to promote internal tourism had a detrimental effect on vehicle sales during March. In 2010, President Fernández created several new holidays for 2011 with two four-day weekends in March, including the resurgence of the Carnival celebrations and the creation of a puente - joining a holiday that falls on a weekday to a weekend by declaring the day between the two dates a holiday.
In January and February 2011, domestic sales of brand new vehicles increased by 32.6% compared with the same period in 2010; however, in March the rate of expansion plummeted, decreasing by half to 16.3%. In a public communiqué, the association of car dealerships of the Argentine Republic (Acara) pointed to the new holidays as the source of this decline: “The special feature was that this past March, as a result of the holidays, there were three fewer working days than in March 2010_the most noticeable feature was that in the last working days of the month there was a flood of vehicle registrations with volumes that practically doubled or tripled the average daily operations."

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