Lack of consumer confidence affecting demand

Fewer new cars will drive onto Lebanon’s streets in 2016 as sales declined slightly from last year. A slower market and tighter profit margins for car dealers have worried some but, like many watchers of the country’s economy, they hope that an election of a president at the end of October will boost consumer confidence, leading to more new car sales. Last year almost 40,000 new vehicles were sold in the country, concluding a string of small gains starting in 2012 that saw an average annual growth rate of 3.3 percent. This year new car sales are not as strong, down 12 percent year-on-year for the month of August and down eight percent in September. Until 2016, incremental growth in new car sales was driven primarily by demand at the lower spectrum of the market, those entry-segment compact cars priced $15,000 or below. But for the current year the downward