The festive season this year did not bring cheers to the automobile industry as it usually does. September became 11th consecutive month to record a slowdown in the automobile sector, as the commercial vehicle sales plunged by 62.11%. The passenger vehicle sales reported witnessed a downfall of 23.79% in September.
The slowdown in the past 11 months is one of the worst for the automobile sector in decades.
According to data released by Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), passenger vehicle sales dropped to 2,23,317 units in September from 2,92,660 a year ago, while passenger car sales dropped by 33.4 per cent to 131,281 units compared to the same period in 2018.
Low demand in recent months has led to a colossal slowdown in the Indian automobile sector which is the fourth largest in the world. The slowdown will further lead to massive retrenchment in the automobile industry, which employs more than 3.5 crore people directly and indirectly. The development spells trouble for the Indian economy, as the auto sector accounts for about half of total manufacturing output for India.
Several auto companies took measures such as declaring non-working days for their employees in the past few months including auto majors such as Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland. A non-working day is forced leave without pay. This was done to reduce the production of vehicles in the factories.
The automobile industry produced a total 14,427,724 vehicles including passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, three-wheelers, two-wheelers, and quadricycle in April-September 2019 as against 16,645,330 in April-September 2018, registering degrowth of 13.32%.
Domestic Sales
SIAM reported degrowth in all kinds of domestic vehicles that include- the declining of passenger vehicles(23.56%), commercial vehicles( 22.95%), three-wheelers(6.66%), and two-wheelers(16.18%) in April-September 2019 compared to April-September 2018 sales.
TYPE OF VEHICLE |
DECLINE IN SALES (in %) |
| Scooters | 16.94 |
| Motorcycles | 15.24 |
| Mopeds | 25.33 |
| Passenger Vehicles | 30.30 |
| Passenger Cars | 3.78 |
| Utility Vehicle & Vans | 35.46 |
| Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicles | 35.79 |
| Light Commercial Vehicles | 14.69 |
| Passenger Carrier | 6.37 |
| Goods Carrier | 7.98 |
The export of automobiles reported a growth, however, of 1.29% from last year.
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