With a year-on-year rise 9.1% from a year ago to 282,600 units, boosting demand for cold-rolled flat products Automotive output took a turnaround toward growth. According to a preliminary report by the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association on the automotive industry trend in May, domestic carmakers produced 282,609 units of automobiles in May, up 9.1% from the same month of 2003. It was much helpful for a rise in demand for such materials as cold-rolled coated flat steel products necessary for automotive use. Particularly, the production of passenger cars surged 13.1% from a year earlier to 254,817 units last month, leading a rise in the overall monthly automotive output, while commercialvehicle output plunged with a steep year-on-year fall of 18.0% to 27,792 units. Such an increasein the monthly output of domestic cars in May was attributed to the brisk exports of finished cars as well as automotive knockdowns. Taking a look at the monthly automotive sales trend in May, exports of finished cars soared 29.1% year-on-year to 190,768 units andoutbound shipments of knockdowns shot up 158.2% from a year ago to 66,610 units. In contrast, however, automotive sales in the domestic market dived 22.7% to 92,329 units compared with the same month last year. After all, the increase in automotive production last month was led by the finished cars and knockdowns produced for exports, and thus, the monthly output of passenger cars, which show relatively heavy reliance on exports, became to increase to a large extent. However, it was noteworthy that domestic sales, which had shown signs of a recovery in April, extremely slumped again in May. It is a question whether the automotive sales in the domestic market could give elasticity to overall output and sales of domestic automobiles in the future. With such a rise in the monthly sales in the sector of passenger cars last month, the year-to-date total of automotive production through May came to 1,389,700 units, down 0.1% from the same period last year. If such a trend continues, the annual automotive production for this year would exceed the previous year's level. Meanwhile, the accumulated domestic sales of Korean-made automobiles in the January-May periodstood at 450,633 units, down 27.9% from the correspondingperiod last year. Of those sales, passenger cars and commercial vehicles posted 353,343 units and 97,290 units, respectively, with a year-on-year plunge of 26.8% and 31.5%. sunhong@snmnews.com