The Ministry of Industry and Trade excluded all passenger and light commercial vehicles from the preferential leasing program

As Kommersant learned, the Ministry of Industry and Trade excluded all passenger and light commercial vehicles from the preferential leasing program to save the budget. Now, with state support, you can only purchase passenger versions of Gazelles or Sollers models, regular buses, as well as electric vehicles and KamAZ tractors. Moreover, less than a month ago new passenger models were added to the list. As a result, according to industry participants, at least a thousand cars are stuck in dealer networks, and the growth of the LCV market, which has not recovered to pre-crisis levels, will slow down.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has revised the requirements for the preferential car leasing program, reducing the list of available models. As sources told Kommersant, last week the lessors were informed that of all passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, only category D (buses) now falls under the conditions. Category D is a passenger transport with nine seats, notes one of Kommersant’s interlocutors, pointing out that “the range of the subsidized car market in monetary terms has been narrowed tenfold.”

Now, according to Kommersant, within the framework of the program you can only buy KamAZ tractors and buses (including LCV bus versions), as well as electric vehicles. Thus, all cargo versions of GAZ and Sollers LCVs, as well as the entire line of Haval and Chinese Avtotor models (BAIC, Kaiyi, SWM) were excluded from the program. The latter were added to the list less than a month ago. The Ministry of Industry and Trade confirmed the changes, noting that it will monitor the situation on the market and, if necessary, adjust the program.

The changes were adopted to stretch the available amount of budget funds over a longer period, Kommersant’s sources say. One of them believes that there were not enough funds to carry out instructions to update bus fleets and increase sales of electric vehicles, so funding was concentrated on these segments. The budget for preferential car leasing in 2024 is 2 billion rubles. The same amount was allocated a year ago, but in the summer of 2023 the budget was increased by 7.8 billion rubles. after increasing the recycling rate.

The exclusion of a number of categories of equipment from preferential leasing, in principle, contradicts Resolution No. 649 on the conditions of the program, which stipulates all categories of transport, according to a Kommersant source familiar with the situation. “The average cycle for concluding a leasing transaction is several weeks. Such manual regulation with unexpected changes, when categories of equipment are put on hold, creates big problems for leasing companies that are forced to refuse transactions already confirmed to clients,” he emphasizes.

Leasing companies are withdrawing their commercial offers from clients under the preferential state program, a GAZ representative confirms: “Currently, about 1 thousand cars are stuck in our dealer network, for which the conditions have already been approved and documents have been drawn up. These are essentially broken deals.” At the same time, leasing is the main tool for purchasing commercial vehicles, the company continues. “About 60% of sales in the LCV and MCV segments are leased, and the bulk of them are under the preferential program during the period of its validity,” explains GAZ. “After the increase in the key rate of the Central Bank, leasing rates increased last year from 16% to 25 %, in these conditions, the preferential state program helped small and medium-sized businesses at least partially offset this rise in prices.”

Sollers told Kommersant that the leasing program was in great demand among LCV buyers: “We hope that it will resume in full later this year, since at the current level of market rates for loans and leasing, sales will begin to stagnate.”

The LCV market is recovering slower than other segments. According to Autostat, sales in 2023 increased by 20%, to 90.4 thousand light commercial vehicles, although before the crisis, in 2021, the market was a record 144 thousand units. According to Avtostat’s forecast, in 2024 the Russian light commercial vehicle market will grow by 22% in the base scenario, to 110 thousand units, in the pessimistic scenario – by 8%, to 98 thousand, in the optimistic scenario – by 33%, to 120 thousand pieces GAZ predicted market growth of 7% for 2024, but “in the new conditions, taking into account high leasing rates and the cancellation of the state program, this will lead to refusal to purchase and losses in sales of up to 10 thousand cars, which corresponds to a market decline of 5% from 2023 instead of forecast growth.” Sergei Udalov from Avtostat believes that if LCV is excluded from the program, the market will not fall, but a scenario will be realized that is closer to the agency’s negative forecast.

Olga Nikitina, Polina Trifonova