Year of decline for cars in 2012-13

Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) announced the domestic sales data for April-March 2013 with just 2.61pc of overall growth over the same period last year. Addressing the media, S Sandilya, President, SIAM, expressed key concerns and suggestions for supporting the growth of the automobile industry. Passenger car segment saw the sales of Cars decline by (-) 6.69pc and the sales of Utility Vehicles going up by 52.2pc in the previous financial year. This suggests the shift of individual interests to UVs from Cars, even as first vehicles. The Commercial Vehicle sales have suffered by (-) 2.02pc in April-March 2013. SIAM stated that although Government introduced a few policies such as JNNURM scheme to purchase buses in hilly areas or even reduction in excise duty on CV chassis by 1pc, but failed to see them through. Further the sales of Medium and Heavy Commercial went down ((-) 23.18pc) whereas the Light Commercial Vehicles saw an increment (14.04pc) in sales. This suggests that customers dealing in these vehicles shifted from Medium and Heavy CVs to Light CVs which could be attributed to poor infrastructure of the nation. Three wheelers and two wheelers saw a tiny rise of 4.87pc and 2.9pc sales increase respectively. Exports have seen decline of (-) 1.34pc for April-March 2013 which further adds to the worries. These problems might get escalated by the approval of FTA between India and European Union. The FTA would allow 50pc tariff reduction for cars imported from Europe thus hampering the growth potential of Indian manufacturers.