Car dealerships are being massively closed in Russia due to prices and low demand — Forbes

In Russia, since the beginning of this year, there has been a process of mass closure of car dealerships. As of September 1, their number in the whole country has decreased by 9 percent, but in a number of million-plus cities the drop reaches 30 percent.

This trend is recorded by Forbes, explaining its low demand, high loan rates and prices for new cars.

It is noted that prices are particularly hitting sales, as they continue to grow due to indexation of scrap collection, high inflation. Against this background, potential customers are moving to a savings model of behavior and opening deposits.

The record holder for the closure of salons this year was Rostov-on-Don (minus 29.3 percent). It is followed by Voronezh (minus 18.8 percent), Volgograd and Samara (minus 18.3 and 18.2 percent, respectively), as well as Krasnoyarsk (minus 17.2 percent).

Moscow is also not in the black — 11.1 percent of car dealerships have closed in the capital. In St. Petersburg, things are even worse (minus 17.6 percent).

Closing salons and cutting costs have become the new norm, dealers admit. Svetlana Vinogradova, CEO of Rolf, commented on the situation.

"The optimization of the dealer network is not a one—time measure, but part of the system work. We have completed cooperation with Kaiyi, BAIC and Sollers brands. The reasons were purely economic: sales volumes did not provide a stable business model, and fixed costs exceeded acceptable values," she said.

The site was also closed on Yakimanka, where it was proposed to sell cars of parallel and alternative imports.

Earlier, EADaily reported that luxury cars sold in the Chinese market will be subject to a 10% tax if their price exceeds the threshold of 900,000 yuan (about 125 thousand dollars).