In a recession-hit market, but at a time when car companies hoped to increase their sales on the liberalised Indian highway, the odograph governor has failed to record readings of accelerated sales that the companies had expected
It appears the year will close at an average growth of around 7 per cent, down from last year's more euphoric 17 per cent. The segment has gained in activity in a major way because of huge investments being committed by a number of multinationals entering the country. However, the size of the country's entire car market is only around 4.5 lakh cars per annum (which amounts to about a couple of months' sales for Ford or General Motors in the US).When the first lot of new entrants such as Daewoo, General Motors and Peugeot entered the country three years ago, the projection was that the Indian car market would grow by an average of 20-25 per cent per annum, reaching anywhere between 8 lakh to a million vehicles by 2000. It would appear that the projections were extraordinarily ambitious.
There has been a drop of 12.3 per cent in the number of cars sold during October this year as compared to the same month last year. With the figure declining from 27,858 to 24,419, the drop has been even more pronounced