Shanghai (ZXZC)- China's Vehicle Inventory Alert Index (VIA), which reflects the inventory pressure of automobile dealers, was down by 0.8 percentage points over a month ago in September, said the China Automobile Dealers Association (CADA).

The VIA stood at 58.6% last month, dropping 0.3 percentage points from the previous year, while still exceeding an official warning threshold.

A lower figure indicates a stronger market demand and a softer inventory pressure for car dealers. According to the CADA, dealers offered greater price discounts to sell more cars because they were striving to fulfill quarterly sales target at the last month of the third quarter. On the other hand, the market was gradually reviving from the transformation to the stricter China Ⅵ emission standard.

However, some factors still stemmed the pressure alleviation to some degree. Due to the busy harvest season, numbers of car buyers in Northern China's rural areas were somewhat decreased. In addition, part of consumers held the wait-to-see attitude since they were wishing for a greater promotion during the National Day Holiday in October.

The association said the index of the imported & premium auto brands (55.8%) and the joint-venture brands (59.5%) in September were decreased over the previous month. The VIA of China's indigenous brands reached at 61.4%, 1.7 percentage points higher than the August number.