Dealers predict rise in sales in coming months

The last financial year took the shine away from the booming Indian auto sector, thanks to the fading economy. Lot of manufacturers offered plethora of discounts and offers at the end of the FY to woo the customers but nothing helped much to gain the lost grounds; even the excise duty relaxation failed to achieve the desired targets. Contrary to all this, according to Sewells Group Automotive Dealer Confidence Index (January-March 2014 quarter), in a survey nearly 62% of dealers of various automobile manufacturing companies are optimistic about the coming six months which they expect to bring a thrust in car sales. Apart from this, 16% of the dealers are confident that the sales will increase.

According to a report from SIAM - (Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers), in the 2013-14 FY the overall sales of automobiles dropped to 6.05 %. SIAM commented, 'In the year that ended last month, sales of passenger vehicles fell 6.05% to 2.5 million units, despite an excise duty cut and auto makers introducing 101 models, including 35 completely new models, it said. Overall, the car sales registered a down of 5% for 13-14 FY compared to the previous year'. There are zillion reasons behind the downfall, the ever rising fuel costs, increasing interest rates and uncertain economy, depreciating value of Indian rupee.

Being optimistic is good but million things fall at right place to make everything perfect. The government plays a crucial role in overall upliftment of any industrial sector. As in the coming couple of weeks it is expected that India will get a stable government; as soon as we get a stable government, market sentiments will improve and so do the economy. The new government is expected to bring relations on green vehicle and also the fuel prices are expected to go down; all these things will surely help the ailing auto-sector to come back to its glory. We are also expecting quite a few scintillating up-coming products in this 2014-15 FY from manufactures like Tata, Honda, Maruti Suzuki, Ford and various others; most of them were showcased at the 12th Indian Auto Expo help in February. The upcoming products like Tata Zest; Bolt, nex-gen Ford Figo hatch & compact sedan, Maruti Suzuki Ciaz and Honda Mobilio will prove to be an icing on the cake when it comes of improving sales in the coming months. Lets see what future holds for us!