Auto production slumps 15.3% in Brazil

Car production slumped 15.3 percent in Brazil last year in the sector's worst showing in five years, leading to job losses of 12,400, national automobile Anfavea said Thursday.
Brazil, the world's seventh largest auto producer, produced 3.15 million vehicles in 2014, down 560,000 on 2013 for the lowest tally since 2009, Anfavea chairman Luiz Moan Yabiku said.
Yabiku said the industry had had to "confront a number of challenges," including a tougher climate for obtaining credit, lost work time owing to extra holidays during the World Cup and a poor foreign trade outlook.
Sales in the world's fifth largest market likewise slid in 2014, down 7.5 percent to 3.5 million units, after a fourth straight year of pallid economic growth, Brazil's auto dealership association Fenabrave announced on Tuesday.