By Bahattin Gonultas
ANKARA
The number of registered vehicles on the roads in Turkey reached over 18.6 million in September 2014, the country's statistics authority said on Wednesday.
A total of 91,553 new and old vehicles were registered in September.
Within this total, cars represented 52.1 percent, small trucks 16.3 percent, motorcycles 15.2 percent, tractors 8.6 percent, trucks 4.1 percent, minibuses 2.3 percent, buses 1.1 percent and special purpose vehicles 0.2 percent.
In terms of the distribution of car model brands for the 46,176 new registered cars in September, Renault recorded 14.8 percent, Volkswagen 12.6 percent, Fiat 8.3 percent, Hyundai 8.1 percent, Toyota 6.2 percent, Opel 6.2 percent, BMW 5.3 percent and Nissan 4 percent.
Meanwhile, consumer borrowing for automobiles in Turkey rose by 5.2 percent between Jan-Oct. of this year as Turks took out more loans for motor vehicle purchases.
However, automobile sales in Turkey have decreased by 16.18 percent and reached 540,000 in the first ten months of the year compared to the same period in 2013, according to Turkey’s Automotive Manufacturers' Association.
Credit for automobiles to consumers reached an all-time high according to outstanding loan balances.
According to the Turkish central bank, the total amount of outstanding automobile loan balances has reached 35.7 billion Turkish liras ($16 billion).
This is a 25 percent increase compared with the 28.3 billion liras owed at the end of 2011.
Nearly 20.6 billion liras of the credit came from banking sector, with the rest coming from other financial institutions.
www.aa.com.tr/en
