Shanghai (ZXZC)- China's automobile import volume for the first half of 2019 jumped 17.2% over the year-ago period to roughly 530,000 units, according to the China Automobile Dealers Association (CADA).

Particularly, the vehicle imports for the month of June reaching around 105,000 units remained flat month on month, while tremendously grew 586.7% compared with the same period a year earlier, primarily thanks to the relatively small base resulting from the last year's tariff slash policy.

For the first six months, the number of vehicles imported by authorized dealers climbed 3.4% over a year ago to 407,414 units, buoyed by price cuts on premium imported cars, tariff reduction policy and the governmental incentives to boost consumption, said the association.

Of that, the auto import volume in June jumped 28.9% to approximately 82,000 units thanks to dealers' strengthened efforts to clear their China V inventory as China VI period was approaching and the small base for the prior-year.

Meanwhile, the inventory turnover of car imports, sitting at 3.36 months last month, was back to a normal level.

In the first six months of 2019, auto parallel imports, that is vehicles bought from other markets for sale in China, soared 51.3% year on year to 90,043 units, accounting for 17% of total auto import volume.

PV imports for the first two quarters grew 16.8% over the previous year to 516,849 units, a bit slower than the growth for overall vehicle imports. As to specific segments, cumulative imports of cars, SUVs and MPVs were 220,969 units, 278,817 units and 17,063 units, up by 15.0%, 18.5% and 14.4% year on year respectively.