LatinNews Daily - 05 September 2023

* Brazil’s national federation of automobile dealers (Fenabrave) has released figures on the sector’s performance in August, which showed that 207,717 new registration plates – a proxy for car sales – had been issued. This marks a decrease from the 225,597 vehicles sold in July and from the 208,577 sold in August 2022. However the accumulated annual sales figure until August 2023 came to 1.43m, a yearly increase from the 1.31m vehicles sold in the same period in 2022. In Fenabrave’s press release, the federation’s president José Maurício Andreta Júnior was cited as saying that the rise in sales in July was due to the federal government’s programme of tax incentives, launched at the end of May, aimed at making cars more affordable for consumers and boosting the manufacturing sector. The government’s temporary measures expired in August, partially explaining the monthly drop compared to July. Andreta Júnior called for “a long-term policy of industrial support” and expressed concern that “this year, there are no signs that we will have a strong recovery in the second half of the year”.