Maruti's sales will fall in 2011-12: CEO

India's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India today said its sales will decline in the current fiscal compared to last year, due to multiplicity of factors like labour unrest and overall negative sentiment in the market.

"Our sales will of course be less in this fiscal compared to 2010-11. Because of strikes, we lost about 1,00,000 units in this fiscal," Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Managing Director and CEO S Nakanishi said at the 11th Auto Expo here.

He, however, declined to share details such as how much decline in sales MSI is expecting in this fiscal.

Till December in this fiscal, sales of the company have declined by 16.6% at 773,361 units.

The company had sold 12,71,005 units in 2010-11, registering a jump of 24.8% over the previous fiscal.

"Factors like inflation, rising interest rates and high fuel prices have led consumers away from purchases," MSI Managing Executive Officer (Marketing and Sales) Mayank Pareek said.

The company is expecting to sell 1.25 lakh units in the overseas markets compared to 1.47 lakh units in FY 2011, he added.

Talking about the company's expansion plans in Gujarat, Nakanishi said, "We will consider it when we achieve a sales of 1.8 million vehicles sales. Once we achieve that, we will decide the timing, amount of capacity and amount of investments."

On diesel engine sourcing from Fiat, he said the company is likely to finalise the deal by the end of this month.

"We are stuck in pricing issue. Hopefully, we will fix it by this month," he said, adding that Fiat has capacity to supply 5,000 units of engines every month, but MSI requires more.