MOSCOW, May 21. Parallel imports of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles into the Russian Federation are declining, as evidenced by the volume of registrations of such vehicles: it has been steadily declining over the past few months, according to a joint study by experts from Otkritie Bank and the Automarketer company, which is available.
“In April of this year, 147,008 new vehicles (passenger cars and light commercial vehicles) were registered on the Russian car market, of which 11% were cars imported through parallel imports. Over the past few months, their share has decreased, amounting to 16% in February, 15% in March and already 11% in April,” the study notes. 
In April relative to March the total registrations of cars imported into country via an alternative channel, decreased by a third.
“As we predicted earlier, in April the volume of registrations of cars imported into the country through parallel imports decreased noticeably. In previous months, sellers were actively importing cars in order to satisfy the demand as much as possible before the new rules regulating such imports came into force,” the general director commented on the statistics. «Automarketing» company Oleg Moseev.
In the structure of parallel imports among brands in April, the leadership again went to Li Xiang (13% of all registrations), which noticeably overtook second place Toyota (9%). Third place in the April ranking belongs to BMW with a share of 8%. The top 5 of the rating also included Geely and Hyundai (7% each).
The rating among models in April was topped by the Geely Monjaro crossover (7% of the total registration volume). Second and third places were taken by Li Xiang L7 (7%) and Li Xiang L9 (6%), and the top 5 again included Kia Sportage and the Zeekr 001 electric car (3% each).
In April, 36% of cars as part of parallel imports were again from Chinese brands. In second place were Japanese brands (22%), in third place were “Germans” (21%), the study notes.