Nadaleen Singh

Of­fi­cials of Massy Mo­tors Lim­it­ed are con­fi­dent that re­cent in­creas­es in the prime lend­ing rates at some com­mer­cial banks will not ad­verse­ly af­fect their sales vol­ume.Na­tal­ie Kara­math, the com­pa­ny's di­rec­tor of New Ve­hi­cle Sales and Mar­ket­ing, said while there might be some im­pact, she is hop­ing the low in­ter­est rate en­vi­ron­ment doesn't end too soon."I do know that it's not go­ing to last for­ev­er so that is why we have to take ad­van­tage of it now and that is what we are do­ing," she said

"I think we have over­come a lot more chal­lenges in the past and this is just an­oth­er chal­lenge to over­come . We'll find an­oth­er way of get­ting our sales. We will work with our part­ners and with our team and we will come up with in­no­v­a­tive ways to en­sure we main­tain steady vol­umes."

Kara­math was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's the Nis­san show­room launch in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. Her com­ments fol­lowed an an­nouce­ment by Re­pub­lic Bank that its prime lend­ing rate had in­creased to eight per cent. Al­so, at a news con­fer­ence ear­li­er this week, First Cit­i­zens said it will al­so in­crease its rates.Even with those de­vel­op­m­ments, Kara­math is pre­dict­ing "a bright out­look" for the com­pa­ny in 2015, with new mod­els to be in­tro­duced to the mar­ket, in­clud­ing a new Navara that will be launched in March.

Kara­math said Massy Mo­tors saw a 16 per cent in­crease in SUV sales this year."The mar­ket this year should be about 18,000 (cars sold). It is like a 16 per cent in­crease from last year. Peo­ple are buy­ing more cars, I don't know where they are putting them but they are buy­ing more cars."

Massy Mo­tors had had a more than 44-year part­ner­ship with Nis­san In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, said di­rec­tor Philip Knag­gs who al­so in­di­cat­ed that con­fi­dence in the mar­ket prompt­ed the com­pa­ny to change its show­room.

"We see the mar­ket as very healthy and con­tin­u­ing to be very healthy. We be­lieve the right thing for our cus­tomers is re­al­ly to con­tin­ue to in­vest in a high­er lev­el of show­room. It is bet­ter for our cus­tomers, it is bet­ter for our em­ploy­ees, it is bet­ter for the part­ners that we work with, so all around we think it is right time to in­vest," he said

New Nis­san brands

The four brands fea­tured at that new show­room are:

�2 Al­ti­ma which starts at $310,000

�2 Qashqai starts at $255,000 and goes up to $295,000

�2 Pathfind­er at $595,000

�2 X-Trail starts at $275,000