Car stock up by 0.4% over March 2012

The stock of licensed motor vehicles in Malta continued to grow at the end of March, up by 0.4% to 315,875 over the previous quarter in 2012.

At the end of March, the stock of licensed motor vehicles stood at 315,875. Of these, 79.3 per cent were passenger cars, 14.5 per cent were commercial vehicles, 5.1 per cent were motorcycles, while buses and minibuses accounted for less than one per cent.

New licences issued during the first quarter this year amounted to 3,557. The majority of new licences (2,846 or 80.0 per cent of the total) covered passenger cars, followed by goods carrying vehicles with 414. Newly-licensed 'new' motor vehicles amounted to 1,621, or 45.6 per cent of the total, and newly licensed 'used' motor vehicles totalled 1,936.

In the first quarter this year, 48 vehicles were exported. Garaged vehicles amounted to 1,625, while scrapped vehicles totalled 1,326.

As at the end of March, 193,004 vehicles, or 61.1 per cent of the total, had petrol engines. Vehicles with diesel engines totalled 122,359, or 38.7 per cent of the total.