By Park Jin-hai
German carmakers were found to have been far from generous on donations.
The three German carmakers ― BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi Volkswagen Korea ― spent 2.3 billion won in total on donations in 2013, according to their audit documents filed with the National Tax Service.
It translates that each carmaker spent an average 770 million won last year.
Given the total sales of 103,566 they made altogether, with their vehicles’ average sales price of 63 million won, it makes each car sold last year donated 22,500 won.
Audi Volkswagen Korea turned out to be the one which spent the smallest sum on donations.
It sold 45,700 cars, with an average vehicle price of 52.4 million won. But it donated just 200 million won, equivalent of less than 0.01 percent of its sales accrued that year.
In 2012, it made the operating profit of 52.2 billion won, but donated just 110 million won.
Mercedes- Benz, whose average vehicle price is the most expensive than the rest two German rivals, has donated 450 million won, the equivalent of only 0.03 percent in 2013.
Each Mercedes-Benz sold at 70.4 million donated just 18,200 won on average in 2013, a slip from 22,000 won from a year earlier.
As for BMW Korea, the most generous of the three, too, its per-vehicle donation portion decreased to 50,600 won in 2013 from 69,000 won in 2012.
BMW Korea, which posted record annual sales of more than 30,000, donated 1.67 billion won last year.
“As the imported vehicle’s market share expands with fastest rate, customers’ expectation for those companies goes up as well,” said an industry watcher. “To have sustainable growth in local market, those companies should return their profits in terms of donations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, consummate to their fattened pockets.”
The three German carmakers account for 60 percent of the imported vehicle market in Korea.
In response to the increased voices for calling more CSR activities, the German trio recently has launched a series of campaigns.
Audi runs a business-academia program where it teaches university students and donate its cars for study to a local university.
Mercedes-Benz recently designated children traffic educations and business-academia programs as its CSR areas.
BMW Korea, the leader in the CSR activities among the three, launched a special foundation in 2011 to sponsor environmental and cultural programs.
“Besides donation, we are injecting additional 2 billion won through the BMW Future Fund to the CSR activities each year. That amount included, the total donation amount could reach 3.6 billion won,” said a BMW official.
“There has been this kind of talks repeatedly. The audit document only states cash donations, given to designated charity organizations, while we operate a several programs that cannot be categorized under cash donations,” said an Audi official. “I also think that forcing and squeezing donations money from businesses is not the best way. We nowadays focus more on so-called corporate social values, creating values through CSR activities.”
In comparison, each Hyundai car sold donated some 88,000 won, while Kia Motors’ car donated 55,000 won.