Malaysia June-July 2012: Why there is no market report

Proton now refuse to share sales data in Malaysia, saying it is against the law…

* See the original Motor Trader Malaysia article by clicking on the title! *

If you are a regular BSCB reader you would have noticed that Malaysian car sales data usually comes pretty late in the month, but for the last two months it hasn’t come at all… There is actually a reason for this. Motor Trader Malaysia, my usual source of model sales data for the country and themselves using Malaysian Automotive Association (MAA) data, announced two days ago that there would not be any data published for June or July, quoting the MAA themselves.

The reason is Proton is unwilling to provide their data, and given they traditionally rank either #1 or #2 brand in Malaysia, a sales summary would not be meaningful without Proton, which is a fair call by the MAA. But why is Proton not communicating any figures? Proton’s refusal to supply the data is due to its belief that doing so would be an offence under the Malaysian Competition Act. The Act, intended to prevent price-fixing (among other things), suggests that sharing of data by car companies is an act of collusion. You can find more information about the Competition Act here.

Now this may sound like a mundane issue but we are actually hitting at the core of what car sales data reporting is: a better transparency for all actors in the car industry, not just manufacturers but all segments of a country’s economy that are impacted by car manufacturing. And better transparency is what I would like to achieve for Africa in BSCB’s Africa Project, which I launched yesterday.

But let’s get into the Malaysian situation in more detail as it has developed into a heated debate…(Click on ‘Read more’ below for the rest of the article)