* Previous forecast was for 7 pct increase
* 1H sales grew at slowest pace in at least 6 years
* Recent stock plunge seen impacting auto sales
(Adds quotes from CAAM, dealer source, Nissan)
By Jake Spring and Winni Zhou
BEIJING, July 10 (Reuters) - China's automakers association
cut its 2015 forecast for vehicle sales growth to a meagre 3
percent on Friday as a major slump in the country's stock market
depresses sales to consumers concerned about economic prospects.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) had
previously predicted combined sales of passenger and commercial
vehicles would grow 7 percent to 25.1 million this year,
compared with 6.9 percent in 2014.
But auto sales for the first half of 2015 grew at the
slowest pace in at least six years as a stock market added to a
list of headaches for automakers. The 1.4 percent year-on-year
sales rise in the world's biggest car market in the first half
was the weakest since at least 2009, according to a Reuters
review of monthly CAAM releases available from late 2008 onward.
On Friday, CAAM said at a news briefing in Beijing that auto
sales in China fell 2.3 percent in June from a year earlier to
1.8 million vehicles, the third consecutive monthly decline.
"The stock market has some impact on car sales as it hurts
cash flow and less people visited 4S (dealership) stores," CAAM
chief Dong Yang told reporters. Dong said he is confident sales
will pick up in the second half.
Automakers are facing headwinds including the slowest
Chinese economy in a quarter century, a corruption crackdown
which is weighing on sales of flashy cars, and a stock market
slide that has squeezed the net worth of some potential buyers.
Car dealers confirm that customer traffic and order intakes
at showrooms have been dwindling over the past month, when the
market fell more than 30 percent, before Thursday's sharp
rebound.
"There has been a big impact on some of our (Mercedes)
stores," a senior financial manager of a dealer group with some
200 stores across China selling cars from multiple
manufacturers, including the premium German brand, told Reuters.
"At some of those most affected stores, customer traffic is
down 20 percent to 30 percent from last year's levels over the
past several weeks. Things are pretty grim out there," the
dealership manager said.
Nissan Motor's Chief Competitive Officer Hiroto
Saikawa said on Thursday the Japanese automaker will keep a
close eye on the Chinese economy in the wake of the stock market
crash.
"The situation (regarding China's stock market) seems more
negative than the economy actually is," Saikawa told reporters
at a Nissan plant in Japan. "We want to assess the actual
economy further. We don't want to go this way and that and run
about in confusion."
(Additional reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu in BEIJING and Maki
Shiraki in KANDA, Japan; Editing by Stephen Coates and Kenneth
Maxwell)
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