Thursday 26 / June / 2025
New Delhi: Amidst the continuing slowdown in the automotive sector, India's ace car-manufacturer Maruti Suzuki, which claims more than 50 percent of the country's car market, has recorded a decline in sales by over 36 percent on year in August.
According to the sales figures released by the company on Sunday, it sells only 93,173 domestic passenger vehicles (PVs) in the previous month, as compared to 145,895 PVs in August 2018.
In all, the company sold 94,728 vehicles, including commercial vehicles, during August 2019, which was 35.9 percent less than 147,700 during the same month last year.
As an exception, the company's sales in terms of utility vehicles rose by over 3 percent, from 17,971 vehicles during last year's August to 18,522 this August.
In terms of sales during this financial year (from April till August), the company sold a total of 562,923 vehicles, including passenger and commercial, as compared to 765,690 vehicles during the same period last year.
As a cost-cutting exercise, only a few days ago, the company had announced laying off as many as 3,000 temporary employees. A couple of other automotive companies also announced cut in production, as their inventory continues to pile up.
In a bid to boost vehicle sales, the country's Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last week announced that all old vehicles in government departments, which need replacement, would soon be replaced with new ones.
As per the data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on Friday, the first Quarter for 2019-2020 (April to June 2019) has shown a real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5 percent.
The decline in the growth rate has triggered a debate even as the country's economists and political class express deep concerns.
The slowdown is said to be due to a decline in the manufacturing sector, sluggish financial services, farm and construction sectors and the overall slowdown in consumption.
