China's auto market growth may halve to 7 percent this year: industry body head

[October 25, 2014]  SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Growth in China's auto market, the world's biggest, will halve to 7 percent this year weighed down by a slowing economy, the head of an industry body said on Saturday.

"Personally, I think growth this year can reach 7 percent," Dong Yang, secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), told reporters on the sidelines of an industry conference in Shanghai.

"The economy is slowing. The auto industry would reflect that but typically lags the economic cycle by a bit."

CAAM had forecast China's auto market, which grew by 13.9 percent last year, to expand at 8.3 percent in 2014. Dong said CAAM will not make any official revisions to its forecast.

Carlos Ghosn, head of Japanese carmaker Nissan Motor Co Ltd <7201.T> and its French alliance partner Renault SA <RENA.PA>, told the same conference he was still optimistic about China's outlook.

"From time to time we have slowdown ... but fundamentally I'm still very optimistic on the fact that the long-term trend in China is up and carmakers should be prepared for that," Ghosn said, pointing to China's low car ownership level compared with other major markets.

Nissan has said its China sales fell by 20 percent in September from a year earlier, the third straight month of decline, due to sluggish sales of light commercial vehicles and increased competition in the passenger car segment.

During the first nine months of the year, overall vehicle sales in China rose 7 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to CAAM data.

China's annual economic growth slowed to 7.3 percent in the third quarter - the weakest pace since the depths of the global financial crisis, and down from 7.5 percent in the previous quarter.

(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Kazunori Takada; Editing by Richard Borsuk)

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