Mexico: India's largest Car Importer

This fiscal year, Mexico is on its way to become biggest export market for automakers of India, regardless of the extreme distance between the two countries. One-fifth of the cumulative sum of all cars shipped from India are imported by Mexico in Central America. Mexico has imported about 1.3 lakh Indian-made cars, which makes Mexico India's topmost overseas market this year. According to reports, car exports to Mexico will increase by over 50% to 1.32 lakh units in 2015-16, as compared to last year with only 82,000 vehicles. As per an Economic Times report, Volkswagen will probably export more than 55,000 cars to Mexico from India and General Motors will ship over 45,000 units of their highly successful small car: Beat, which is sold as Spark in the Mexican market. Ford's Figo, Figo Aspire, Maruti Suzuki's Ciaz, Hyundai's i10 Grand and Xcent, are a few other Indian cars that are exported to Mexico.

A Volkswagen representative said "Mexico is the most important and largest export market for Volkswagen India. In 2014, we shipped approximately 55,000 cars to Mexico. In 2015, we expect to ship slightly higher number to Mexico”. The cost advantage in Mexico is about 20%-30% because of which, regardless of the freight cost and an import duty of 20%, Volkswagen India, General Motors India and other Indian auto manufacturers are shipping large units of their cars to Mexico from India. Gaurav Vangaal, who is a senior analyst, forecasting, at IHS Automotive, explained that the booming demand in Mexico is a blessing in disguise for carmakers that were unable to utilise their production capacity due to slow demand. Rakesh Srivastava, senior VP for sales and marketing at Hyundai Motor India, revealed that his company plans to raise exports to Mexico by 37% in 2015 and ship over 12,500 cars. Car like Nissan Sunny, Volkswagen Vento, Ford Fiesta and other mid-size sedans make up over 10% of the market with about 1.2 lakh units.

Also Read: Nissan Micra leads 2014-15 car exports