New car sales in February fell 1.5% from a year earlier to 1.38 million cars, the first decline in six months, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. While the first two months of the year saw automobile sales reach 3.6 million vehicles, up 5.1% over the same period in 2015, the growth rate was well below the 7.8% forecast by the association. “While it could be argued that an earlier Lunar New Year holiday this year has been negative for car sales growth, we believe the recent trends point to industry volume growth in the mid-single digits,” said analyst Robin Zhu at research firm Sanford C. Bernstein.
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