Official figures have confirmed that sales of automobiles across China continued to grow strongly during March, recording a 56% rise as compared to the same month of 2009. This set a new monthly record of 1.74 million vehicles. The numbers were revealed by semiofficial industry group on Friday.

The record was previously held by the month of January, when sales had managed to more than double to hit 1.66 million vehicles, thereby proving that Government incentives aimed mainly at boosting the demand have continued to remain effective even over a year after they were first officially introduced.

Over the past year, sales of automobiles in China had hiked by almost 50% to 13.6 million units, pushing the country past US and making it the world's largest auto market for the first ever time. Analysts, however, are expecting that the sales growth over this year would be marginal, hitting about 10-15% at maximum.

For the month of March, sales of passenger vehicles hiked by 63% to 1.26 million units.

"Passenger car sales turned out to be even better than earlier market estimates", said Rao Da, General Secretary of the Shanghai-based China Passenger Car Association.