We see a beginning of a good recovery process and we hope that as we go along with a good monsoon this year, we should see more robust and more sustained growth taking place in the second half of the year – Vishnu Mathur, SIAM Director General
New Delhi : In a sharp uptick, cars sales rose by 17.47 % in July – highest in three months – to 1.62 lakh units helped by Maruti and Honda, but rural-market dependent motorcycles and LCVs continued to skid.
This marks the ninth consecutive month of domestic sales growth for passenger cars and a strong rebound from a modest rise of just 1.5 % in June This is also the best-ever show for the month of July in the domestic market.
Sales of motorcycles and light commercial vehicles (LCVs), which primarily depend on rural markets, fell by 6.36 % and 4.11 % respectively. According to the data released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), domestic passenger car sales in July stood at 1,62,022 units, as against 1,37,922 in the same month of last year. This is the highest growth after 18.14 % recorded in April. “We have seen fairly good growth in the passenger vehicle industry and in heavy commercial vehicle industry. We have almost seen 7.46 % growth in the passenger vehicle as a whole, out of which passenger cars has grown by about 10 % and in the medium and heavy commercial vehicle industry, we have seen a very decent growth of almost 25 %,” SIAM Director General Vishnu Mathur told reporters here. In July, leading passenger car makers as Maruti Suzuki reported an increase of 25.85 % in its sales to 91,602 units in comparison to 72,782 units of July 2014.
Similarly, Honda sales were up 42.98 % to 17,567 units; Tata Motors to 8,520 units with an increase of 26.18 %; Sales of Hyundai Motors India Ltd were up only 1.83 % to 29,599 unit in July 2015 as against 29,067 units of last year. Car sales of some makers such as Ford, General Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra has declined in July.
Buoyed by overall performance, auto industry is expecting a better performance with a good monsoon which may push rural sales. “Overall, we see a beginning of a good recovery process and we hope that as we go along with a good monsoon this year, we should see more robust and more sustained growth taking place in the second half of the year,” Mathur said.
