Passenger vehicle wholesales in India slipped to a ten-year low in the April-December this fiscal, and the industry will have to work hard to regain better volumes and business health, industry body SIAM said on Thursday. While releasing the wholesale numbers for December and the third quarter (October-December) of the current fiscal, the industry body said high levels of uncertainty remain in the industry due to COVID-19 situation and shortage of critical components like semiconductors.

 

SIAM noted that sales improvement in December and the third quarter did not convey the actual picture of the auto industry, which continues to face severe headwinds. As per the latest data by Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), domestic passenger vehicle (PV) wholesales increased 13.59 per cent to 2,52,998 units last month as compared with 2,22,728 in December 2019. Similarly, in the October-December quarter this fiscal, PV sales rose 14.44 per cent to 8,97,908 units from 7,84,616 in the year-ago period.

 

“If we look at absolute numbers from April-December 2020, some clear highlights emerge. We are at a seven-year low in the two-wheeler segment, ten-year low in the PV segment. Similarly, we are behind ten years in the commercial vehicle segment. In the three-wheeler segment, we are behind 20 years. This means the auto industry will have to work hard to regain better volumes and business health,” SIAM President Kenichi Ayukawa told reporters in a virtual press conference. He noted that 2019-20 fiscal was a year of big de-growth for the auto industry, so using it as a base to calculate percentage growth for the current fiscal year would be misleading.

 

“The sales growth we saw during the third quarter of the current fiscal contains some of the pent up demand from the first quarter, so standalone sales performance of the third quarter may not be a true reflection of the industry's overall sales,” he said. Instead, cumulative sales from April to December 2020 period would better reflect the market pulse, Akukawa added. In the April-Dec period of the current fiscal, PV sales declined by 16.06 per cent to 17,77,874 units as compared to 21,17,920 units in the same period of 2019-20. Similarly, two-wheeler sales declined by 22.63 per cent, commercial vehicles by 37.23 per cent and three-wheelers 74.25 per cent as against the April-December period of 2019-20.