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Shanghai and Jilin lockdowns: China’s carmakers lost 1 million vehicles in production last month amid strict Covid-19 containment measures
- Impossible to restore the entire supply chain before June, analyst says
- Nationwide sales also plummeted, declining by 47.1 per cent, in April: CAAM
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China’s automobiles industry lost 1 million vehicles in production last month amid severe lockdown measures introduced to contain outbreaks of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of Covid-19.
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Total output by all carmakers across the country plunged by 46.2 per cent to 1.2 million units, as major companies, ranging from Tesla, General Motors and SAIC Motor in Shanghai to FAW Group and its joint ventures with the likes of Volkswagen (VW) in the northeastern Jilin province, idled assemblies amid a breakdown in supply chains.
Data by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) shows that nationwide sales also plummeted, declining by 47.1 per cent to 1.18 million units.
“Production volume will continue to drop in the coming one or two months, because it is impossible to restore the entire supply chain before June,” said David Zhang, a researcher at the North China University of Technology. “In the Yangtze River Delta, thousands of automotive supply-chain firms took a pounding from the coronavirus control measures.”
The automobiles industry is one of China’s biggest employers, providing jobs for one in every six among its workforce of 800 million people, according to analysts’ estimates.
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Output in April was at its lowest in 10 years, CAAM said. And while it does not publish data for individual car firms, it said companies in Shanghai and Jilin were the hardest hit owing to strict lockdown measures.
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