December auto sales not promising enough

The primary reason behind the marginal growth is heavy discounting and low base in the corresponding month last year. While few carmakers are still in transition phase adjusting stock level of BS-IV vehicles as the industry is moving towards stricter emission norms

- Ritwik Sinha

The country’s motown had a forgettable year- 2019, the sector was cornered by the economic slump in the Indian corporate sector, financing issues, elections and a negative buying sentiment heavily contributed to the auto industry sales witnessing a heavy slowdown. Almost all established manufacturers were affected by the slowdown; whereas the new players including Kia Motors and MG Motor India managed to secure better sales figures despite the overall slowdown.

In December 2019, most of the carmakers like Hyundai, Tata Motors and Honda posted negative growth, only Maruti Suzuki and Mahindra & Mahindra showed some recovery in the month of December, according to the data released by the individual companies till date.With an overall sales figure of 234,673 units in the month of December 2019, the industry witnessed a fall of just 1.04 percent compared to the same time, last year. Meanwhile, November 2019 saw better at 263,418 units; almost 11 percent higher.

Maruti Suzuki

The country’s largest passenger car manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) sold a total of 133,296 units in December 2019. This includes 124,375 units in domestic market, 1,360 units of domestic OEM sales and 7,561 units of exports.

In the domestic market MSI recorded a growth of 3.5 percent in the last month of the year selling 125,735 units as compared to 121,479 units sold a year ago. That said, the prolonged slowdown still has aftereffects on the quarter sales. The company has witnessed a year-on-year sales decline of 16.9 percent combining the first three-quarter sales. It sold 11,00,698 units in the April - December period as compared to 13,24,837 units which were sold in the same period a year ago.