He also pointed out that there are other damages in the automotive industry, for example, freight costs, manufacturing, shortage of electronic elements, being one of the most complicated moments for the sector and the country.

The leader of ASALVE said that this problem shows no signs of a solution in the short term and added that, in the second half of 2022, it is expected that some well-known brands of semiconductor (chips) manufacturers may invest to triple production and thus alleviate the crisis a little.

Renderos said that with the arrival of the pandemic, the biggest challenge for the sector was to stop the largest amount of inventories, to talk to the factories to stop producing and send vehicles, waiting for the economy to reactivate, then the reactivation came and surprisingly it detonated much more than expected.

Likewise, he said that many Salvadorans, during the reactivation of the economy, decided to change their sedan vehicles for work and cargo transportation; vehicles such as trucks or pick up trucks to sell vegetables or other things that would help them to obtain economic income for their homes.

He said that in the import by sea, in ships coming from Asia for example, is scarce and they have to go at 100% capacity to their destination due to the high cost of freight, that is why the vehicle agencies are putting the automobiles in a list in which the clients will have to wait up to 6 months to receive their vehicles.

"Customers who believe that it is negligence of the distributors, sellers or some manager and it is not so, the factories themselves do not know whether or not they will be able to manufacture some models due to lack of supplies and semiconductors", said Roberto Renderos, vice president of ASALVE.