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Italian Car Sales to Drop as Incentives Not Extended

Last year’s car sales were helped by government’s decision to provide car incentives. Though the scrappage schemes around the world offered different cash amounts to the customers that wanted to trade their old cars with new ones, the matter of the fact is that they worked. Unfortunately, this year most of the states which offered such incentives decided to drop them. Consequently, such measures will attract serious sales drop.

Car sales in Italy will fall sharply this year due to the government’s decision to give up the scrappage incentives for new car purchases, says just-auto.com. The announcement expected by the automakers was delivered by the minister for economic development, who said this week that the government was moving away from renewing the programme.

According to Fiat’s predictions, made public a while ago, without the program, car sales in Italy will drop by 350,000 vehicles in 2010. JD Power Automotive Forecasting predicted a flat market, but this was only valid provided that the government will continue the incentives. As the government refused to do that, JD is expecting the car market to drop to 1.92 million cars from 2.19 million in 2010.

Things are not looking bright for the Italian auto industry either, as Sergio Marchionne’s recent decision to shut down production at Fiat’s Termini Imerese factory in Sicily launched strikes in Fiat plants across the country. This week, workers at the Maserati plant located in Modena, northern Italy, went on strike on Tuesday. The reason for the strike is the brand’s management refusal to answer questions related to the possible move of the Maserati production to the Bertone factory in Turin.
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