Automobile Sector Slowdown: Festive Season Fails To Revive Market; Sales Down By Over 12 Per Cent In October, Shows Data

Despite the traditional up-tick in sales during the festive season, the slump in the domestic automobile sector continued unabated in October with the overall sectoral off-take plunging 12.76 per cent.

On Monday (11 November), data furnished by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), showed that the Indian automobile sector's total sales declined by 12.76 per cent to 2,176,136 units in October, from 2,494,345 units sold during the corresponding month of the previous year.

The data assumes significance as it showed that an expected up-tick in wholesales on the back of the festive season did not materialise.

Other reasons such as low rural demand along with a slowdown in economic activity have been cited for the de-growth.

Nonetheless, after nearly 12 months of de-growth, the passenger vehicles sales turned flattish. The off-take during the month under review inched-up by 0.28 per cent to 285,027 units this October, on a year-on-year basis.

SIAM President, Rajan Wadhera, told reporters that healthy PV retail sales have been reported and that the coming months of November-December are expected to be better than the corresponding period of last year.

However, passenger cars sales witnessed de-growth of 6.34 per cent to 173,649 units. In September, sales were down 33.4 per cent.

But the utility vehicle sales grew by 22.22 per cent to 100,725 units, whereas vans' off-take went down by 35.08 per cent to 10,653 units against that in the same month a year ago.

Wadhera cited the entry of new players and products in the utility vehicle segment as the core reason for the rise in sales.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)