Auto sales to rev up this festive season: SIAM

Published On Sep 03, 2011 01:32 PM By Meenal for Maruti Swift 2014-2021

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The grim face of Indian car industry will not remain the same, said Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) on Friday. The car sales are likely to pick up by mid of September ahead of the festive season in India. SIAM, a respectable body in automobile sector, headed by Director of Mahindra & Mahindra, held a press conference to state that the growth rate of car industry during April-July was 13.55 per cent. However, the rate was the lowest in two years for the June-July period.

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Vishnu Mathur, the Director general of SIAM briefed reporters that rising fuel prices and high interest rates are the major bane for auto industry and almost all major car makers like Maruti Suzuki India, Tata Motors, Hyundai etc. were reporting a slowdown in August sales. He clarified that customer's footfall in car showrooms was fairly good but aforesaid reasons didn't help the footfall to get converted into purchases. All the dealers are facing the market challenges but the worst affected are the SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) as they need to borrow capital from financial bodies to expand their business. These tier-I and tier-II companies remain at a risk of collapsing unless their sales improve.

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Highlighting the dismal sales, was Maruti India which recorded a 12.7% decline. But the failure with its sales cannot be owed only to hiked fuel price and interest rates. Labour unrest was the major cause of loss for Maruti. Tata Motors reported a two percent downfall in domestic sales and 18% downfall in exports. Even Hyundai's model were not performing well in the market and the company could manage to hold on with a marginal one percent growth. The market indicated signs of a slowdown but with many upcoming cars like Renault Koleos, Etios diesel variants, Honda Brio, Nissan Sunny, Volkswagen Golf and Tiguan etc. this diwali season is expected to light-up.