According to data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), total vehicle sales in the domestic market fell by almost 10%.
Domestic sales decline almost 10%
NEW DELHI: The slowdown in automobile sales is getting accentuated with each passing month. According to data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), total vehicle sales in the domestic market fell by almost 10% to 8,89,693 units during September. For the six-month period ending September, the degrowth was almost 6% to 45,85,502 units.
But now that the interest rates for buying new cars and two-wheelers have begun to ease — State Bank of India announced up to 100 basis points cut on auto loans on Wednesday — the picture may not look so grim October onwards. Other banks may follow suit.
With the festival season beginning, vehicle makers have begun offering massive discounts and increased spending by consumers coupled with eased interest rates could bring the smile back to vehicle manufacturers pretty soon.
But, when it comes to growth trends, September had plenty of surprises. After many years, growth in domestic sales of passenger vehicles (cars, utility vehicles and multi-purpose vehicles) slipped to single digits (9.67%) at 133,320 units. This, despite passenger cars logging a healthy 12% growth to 105,822 units (94,757) during the month.
Commercial Vehicles posted almost flat domestic growth at 42,770 units (up by a mere 0.96%) whereas two-wheelers continued their free fall with domestic growth slipping by over 13% to 6,79,766 units during September. Three-wheeler sales recorded an almost 9% decline at 33,837 units.
In exports, too, the situation wasn’t much better. Overall exports were up by less than 8% at 96,853 units, with passenger cars and two-wheelers declining about 7% each.
Let’s now look at passenger cars, where Maruti Suzuki not only lead all other car makers in growth but also surpassed its parent Suzuki Motor’s sales for the six months ending September for the first time ever.
According to a Bloomberg report, Maruti Suzuki sold 336,758 cars, vans and sport-utility vehicles in the domestic market between April and September, exceeding the preliminary 315,000 vehicles Suzuki sold in Japan in the same period.
Meanwhile, in the domestic market, compact cars continued their dominance not only in terms of sheer numbers but also in logging the highest growth rate among all sub-categories. Last month saw 87,900 compact cars being sold in the domestic as well as export markets. This was a growth of over 20% over 62,541 compacts sold in the same month last year.
While growth in percentage was the highest for the luxury segment (BMW’s S80 and Daimler Chrysler’s S-Class Mercedes), with 66 units sold versus 44 sold last September. This translated into a 50% rise, though in terms of actual numbers, compacts still far outstrip all other segments.
The mid-sized sedan segment (Honda City, Hyundai Verna, Mahindra Logan, Maruti Esteem and SX4 etc) logged almost 6% degrowth at 22,547 units (domestic plus exports) while the executive segment (Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla etc) grew by about 20% to 4,593 units.
For two-wheelers, however, growth was seen only in the scooter/scooterette sub-segment at 26.17% with 95,266 units sold in the domestic market. Motorcycles declined a whopping 18.4% to close September at 5,48,816 units (6,72,570 units).
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