Tractor market: an uneven scenario
The trend of sales in the first nine months of the year shows substantial gains in India, the United States and Canada whereas downturns are reported for Japan, Brazil and Turkey. The European market is down in France, Germany and Spain
After registrations in 2017 increased by 13% overall globally with more than 2 million sales, in the current year the tractor market slipped into some critical factors brought on by economic considerations which conditioned a number of important countries. Data provided by Agrievolution, the organization representing agricultural machinery associations in some of the major countries, disclosed differing trends from country to country in the first nine months of the year. In India, where the market has climbed to first place in the world with tractor sales at some 600,000 units annually, sales showed a at strong gain of 18% over the same period in 2017. Data on the trend of China’s market over the first six months is not yet available for the country which ranked second behind India in the same period in 2017 with 500,000 tractors sold throughout the country while the Japanese market dropped by 9%.
Sales in Turkey and Brazil were in sharp decline, two countries with remarkable growth in recent years. With the devaluation the currency by 40% at the beginning of the year and inflation up to 24.5% in September, Turkey’s market fell by 29%
Tractor sales in Russia declined by 3% whereas Brazil is subjected to the country's economy and uncertainty ahead of the presidential elections leading to a 0.3% gain in sales. North American markets experienced a positive phase with good performances in the United States, up 8%, and Canada, gaining 3%. The trends for the Western Europe tractor markets were generally negative, down by 5% for the first nine months of 2018. Also in this case there various trends among the countries: the September balance sheet reported a substantial 8% drop in France, Germany down by 9% and Spain decling by 10%, whereas the UK managed a recovery up to about 7% possibly due to a favorable exchange rate. According to the evaluations of FederUnacoma - the Federation of the Italian agricultural manufactures, one of the world’s majors in the sector working in global markets with a reliable understanding of the trends in various regions for potential growth - the difficulties in bilateral trade relations among the countries is due to restrictive customs policies blocking some of these trade flows.
