PARIS (Reuters) – New car registrations in France jumped 192% year on year in March, having been hit heavily by the country’s first two-month COVID-19 lockdown in the corresponding month last year.
France’s CCFA association of carmakers on Thursday said that registrations of passenger vehicles were 182,775 last month.
That figure remains lower than the average 210,000 total usually registered for March, a CCFA spokesman said.
Over the first quarter the French car market is up 21.1% year on year after the first two months of the year had been down 14.2%.
The CCFA stuck to its forecast of a 9% increase of registrations this year.
(Reporting by Gilles Guillaume; Writing by Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by David Goodman)