BEIJING, Jan 11 (Reuters) - China’s vehicle sales in December rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier to 3.06 million vehicles, marking a seventh consecutive month of gains, an industry association said on Thursday.
With that, the full-year sales for 2017 rose to 28.88 million vehicles, up 3 percent on year, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) showed. This is against a 5-percent growth forecast set at the beginning of 2017.
According to CAAM, sales of new-energy vehicles (NEV) in December rose 56.8 percent from a year earlier to about 163,000 vehicles amid a government push to support the sector and shift away from traditional petrol-engine cars in the long term.
China’s auto market is likely to see growth of around 3 percent this year, CAAM said last month, in what would be a second straight year of lacklustre growth. (Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk)