South Korea's Kia motors February sales shrink 8.7%

Kia Motors Corp., South Korea's second-largest automaker, said Monday its sales dropped 8.7 percent in February from a year ago, affected by fewer working days that led to less vehicles available for overseas shipments.
The carmaker sold 221,669 units overall last month, down from 242,797 vehicles a year earlier, Kia Motors said in a statement.
Domestic sales inched up 1.2 percent on-year to 35,450 units, while overseas sales fell 10.4 percent to 186,264 units over the same period, according to South Korea's (Yonhap) News Agency.
The decline in exports is attributable to fewer working days last month because of the Lunar New Year holiday, which resulted in a cut in production of vehicles here available for foreign shipments. The holiday fell in January last year.
The Morning city car was last month's bestseller at 7,127 units sold, followed by the all-new Sorento and all-new Carnival sport utility vehicles with 5,728 and 4,600, respectively.
During the first two months of this year, Kia's cumulative domestic sales expanded 4.6 percent to 72,207 units, but its exports shrank 6.7 percent to 402,313, the carmaker said.