AD MAGAZINE 342

39 AutoData | March 2018 afford even more costs and bureaucratic processes and, even, perhaps, thinking of retaking business one day. The association then isolated the CNPJs that spent at least six months wi- thout issuing a single invoice for the sale of vehicle 0 KM. And then in this period the 7 thousand 330 became 6 thousand 56, including the CNPJs created for new ones. The impact of these closures on the labor market was brutal, says Fenabrave. For their accounts, 169.5 thousand jobs in the concessionaires network were cut in these three years, considering in this cal- culation the vacancies lost by the houses that stopped working and also the ones that wiped out their staff, even keeping the doors open. OUT OF ICU But this scenario, as it seems, is now past. For Assumpção Jr. , “2015 and 2016 represented the worst moment of the automotive industry, with no precedent. The last quarter of 2017 showed some re- covery, but regrettablywe have returned ten years in volume”. Disclousure/Fenabrave Fenabrave’s Market Projections for 2018 2 088 762 +12.6% 341 861 2 430 653 72 939 +8,1% +11,9% +8,6% 57 025 +9,5% 15 914 +5,4% 27 598 906 254 +7,8% +6,5% Automobiles Light commercials Automobiles + light commercials Truck + buses Trucks Buses Road Implements Motorcycles 3 437 444 +10,3% Total In units. Source: Fenabrave Or, in colloquial language, “the distri- bution sector is still hospitalized but has left the ICU and recovers in the bedroom. You’ve stopped having only soup, and now you’re going to have roast beef.” Fenabrave’s projections are optimistic and indicate sales in 2018 about 10% hi- gher than last year, considering the avera- ge of all segments of the distribution (see full table above). Assumpção Jr. considers that the economic scenario ahead justifies the projections, and guarantees that “what sells car is cheap interests and what sells truck is GDP”. In the first item, it covers the fall in the Selic rate, the current default rates at a controlled level and a probably higher appetite of the banks for increasing their portfolios of the segment as fundamental factors. “Banks were earning with inflation, and as it is now low institutions should be more willing to finance more customers.” About the second one, it uses Fenabrave’s own economic advice as a reference, which indicates a 3.5% increase in GDP for this year. In addition to the good scenario of the