Despite the expected traditional hike in sales during the festive season, the slump in the domestic automobile sales continued unabated in October with the overall sectoral off-take plunging 12.76 per cent to 2,176,136 units sold (as per Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, SIAM).
Reasons such as low rural demand along with a slowdown in economic activity have been cited for the decline in automobile sales. SIAM President Rajan Wadhera told reporters that healthy PV retail sales have been reported and that the coming months of November-December are expected to be better than the corresponding period of last year. Also, the current figures are only wholesale numbers and not retail data.
Speaking factually, here’s what the automobile sales numbers look like:
Passenger’s cars’ sales de-grew by 6.34 per cent to 173,649 units. Utility vehicle sales grew by 22.22 per cent to 100,725 units, whereas vans’ off-take went down by 35.08 per cent to 10,653 units against that in the same month a year ago. The sale of three-wheelers in September declined by 3.60 per cent to 66,985 units. In the case of two-wheelers, which include scooters, motorcycles and mopeds, the sale edged lower by 14.43 per cent to 1,757,264 units.
However, exports across categories were higher by 2.72 per cent at 395,964 units. The sales decline has also dented production levels, causing job losses. The domestic passenger car production has fallen by 30.22 per cent to 162,343 units from 232,649 units.
IANS