Russia’s new car sales up 47% in 2024

Sales of new passenger cars in Russia increased by 47 per cent year on year to 1.55 million units in 2024, Russian news agencies reported on Saturday, citing industry and trade ministry data.

New sales in 2025 are seen dropping by around 10 per cent to 1.43 million units, Sergei Tselikov, head of Russian analytical agency Autostat, said in December, as high inflation and scrappage fees push prices up.

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 drastically reshaped Russia’s car market, with Western carmakers abandoning the country and Chinese ones swooping in to plug the production gap. Sales slumped in 2022 but have been steadily recovering.

Meanwhile the Russian rouble weakened against the dollar on Friday in thin trade as Russia is marking a public holiday until Jan. 9.

One-day rouble/dollar futures, which trade on the Moscow Exchange and are a guide for the over-the-counter exchange rate, were down 1 per cent to 101.61 by 0858 GMT. The Russian central bank’s last official exchange rate was set at 101.68.

On the interbank market, the rouble was hovering at 110.50, recovering slightly after slumping to a near three-year low of almost 115 in the previous session, when the currency was not traded in Moscow.

Sanctions on Moscow Exchange and its clearing agent, the National Clearing Centre (NCC), led to a range of varying prices and spreads as trading shifted to the over-the-counter (OTC) market in June 2024, obscuring access to reliable pricing for the Russian currency.

The rouble weakened 0.8 per cent to 13.82 against China’s yuan on Moscow Exchange trading.

Brent crude oil, a global benchmark for Russia’s main export, was down 0.2 per cent at $75.79 a barrel.