January saw a record in new car deliveries in Israel: more than 36,000 new vehicles with an aggregate value of NIS 3.25 billion, including taxes, were delivered to private and business customers. The previous record in January 2015 was 34,000 deliveries.
The deliveries are attributable to the new model effect, which leads many private and business customers to postpone their new vehicle purchases over the past three months of the year until January and February. In December 2015, for example, deliveries were very low - in the vicinity of 10,000 units.
The auto sector, however, believes that the importers' real orders backlog has grown substantially, and that the exceptional orders will persist into February and March, due to the waiting lists for some models, delivery of which will reach Israel only next month. Like last year, deliveries of models in the luxury and premium car classes were outstandingly high - more than 5,000 units.
Fuel taxes also set a new record this week. Fuel taxes, which include excise tax and VAT, yesterday reached 67.4% of the per-liter price of gasoline, even after the consumer price went down by a few agorot. The previous record, 66.9% of the consumer price, was set in January. Energy sector sources told "Globes" today that the fixed fuel excise tax in Israel was outmoded, inflexible, and unsuitable for the current trend in the global fuel markets, while resulting in brutally excessive taxation. They added that the tax was completely disproportionate to the real price of the product, and did not enable consumers to benefit from the drop in energy prices.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 2, 2016
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