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This was the best November ever for carmakers, with cumulative despatches at India’s top 10 passenger vehicle makers jumping 31.7 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to 310,807 units last month as better availability of semiconductors enabled them to produce more. It was also the sixth straight month when domestic car sales zipped past 300,000 units. Auto firms in India count despatches to dealers as sales.
The world’s fourth largest passenger vehicle market is well on its course to breach peak sales of calendar year 2018 and conclude the year ending December 31 with an estimated 3.8 million units, Shashank Srivastava, senior executive officer (marketing and sales) at Maruti Suzuki India told reporters. The previous highest was 3.3 million units in 2018.
Carmakers’ confidence of ending the year with record sales stems from a robust order book of 750,000 units for the industry, with Maruti’s share at 375,000 units.
The market leader saw sales across the entry, compact and SUV segments rising 20.6 per cent YoY in November to 132,395 units in the domestic market.
Sales at Hyundai Motor India advanced 29.7 per cent to 48,003 units. “The company is well poised to achieve the highest ever domestic sales in 2022 since its inception in India,” said Tarun Garg, director, sales, marketing and service, at Hyundai Motor India.
Tata Motors, too, saw its despatches jump 55 per cent to 46,425 units during the month. Mahindra and Mahindra’s sales in November also increased 56 per cent to 30,238 units.
With the exception of Toyota and Nissan Motor, which saw volumes decline 9.4 per cent and 9.5 per cent, respectively, most other firms including Kia India, Honda Cars, MG Motor, Skoda Auto saw high double-digit growth in November sales.
“We recently crossed the landmark of our all-time high sales record, becoming the third largest market for Škoda Auto with our November sales,” said Petr Šolc, brand director, Škoda India. Albeit on a low base, Škoda has doubled its annual sales this year over 2021, he said.
Even though Srivastava and his peers in the industry are optimistic about the road ahead, they have not lost sight of the rear-view mirror.
“The demand parameters seem to be steady at the moment. But we do have to be watchful of a couple of things,” said Srivastava alluding to the repo rate hike which has already started to reflect in lending rates. Given that eight of every ten cars are bought on credit, finance is an important determinant in car sales.
Meanwhile, a “sticky inflation” and projections of economic growth of around 7 per cent with a negative bias could also be a deterrent. “We have to watch carefully,” he said.
On Tuesday, S&P Global Ratings cut India’s economic growth forecast for the current fiscal year ending March 31, to 7 per cent from 7.3 per cent projected earlier. S&P also cut the growth forecast for 2023 to 6 per cent from the 6.5 per cent projected earlier.
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