This quarter could well be Maruti Suzuki India’s best this fiscal.
Rural sales are looking up, sales to corporate clients are rising and the company has already ensured supply of one lakh additional diesel engines a year for the next three years, so diesel vehicle production will get a boost.
Surely, it won’t be unreasonable to assume the company will beat the 311,000 vehicle sales mark reached in the March quarter last fiscal.
The company has, in fact, reduced the decline in sales margin in January by increasing sales in select pockets, said Mayank Pareek, managing executive officer (marketing & sales). It now expects to close this fiscal with an 11% decline year on year — it sold 1.32 million vehicles last fiscal.
“Till December, our overall sales were down 16%, but now the decline is only 14% and by March, we expect to reduce it further to 11%. This, despite losing 106,000 vehicles due to the labour trouble earlier this year,” said Pareek.
On the increase in diesel capacity, Pareek said that as per the new sourcing deal Maruti has worked out with Fiat India, it will get one lakh additional diesel engines and this will help it increase overall sales.
Rapid dieselisation of the market has meant sales growth is happening only in diesel cars.
In January, Maruti itself witnessed a 34% increase in diesel car sales against a decline of 6% in sales of petrol cars.
In the overall passenger car industry, every second car sold this December was diesel — the highest ever proportion of diesel cars sold in any one month. Industry figures for the latest month are not available yet.
Buoyed by this, Maruti is even considering setting up a new diesel engine manufacturing plant and will take a decision on this after the Budget, said Pareek.
Meanwhile, the company on Wednesday launched a shorter version of its Swift DZire sedan at an introductory price between Rs4.79 lakh and Rs7.09 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). The new car is about Rs25,000-30,000 cheaper than the older version.
Comments