Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL), the country’s largest car maker expects sales to gather steam from the first week of September. The auto major is betting on the festive season to rev up sagging sales of passenger cars.
The car maker, which had set a growth target of 10-12 per cent in the beginning of 2011-12, has revised its sales target downwards and expects only a single-digit growth during this financial year.
Car sales have been on a downhill in the April-July period, restrained by hardening interest rates and surging fuel prices. Exports had taken a considerable hit as the European market is in the grip of a financial turmoil.
“The recovery in car sales is expected to begin in early September. Still, the turnaround will be slow, as we don’t think there will be a dip in interest rates. We had initially set a growth target of 10-12 per cent for 2011-12 but we expect only a single-digit growth this financial year,” said Shashank Srivastav, chief general manager.
It could manage to sell 317,000 cars in the first four months of the current financial year. The auto giant recorded sales volume of 1.18 million cars across all its models in 2010-11.
The company, however, expects exports in 2011-12 to remain more or less the same as in the previous financial year. In 2011-12, it had exported around 150,000 units.
“Our exports are projected to be the same as last year. We are looking at the non-European countries for exports,” said Srivastav.
The all-new Swift, the latest car model from the Maruti Suzuki stable, is set to drive sales. The earlier version of the Swift has already been phased out. “July was not a good month for the Indian auto industry and Maruti Suzuki also clocked negative growth but we expect the Swift to get us the volumes,” he said.
Pan-India sale of this new car is expected to be around 17,000 units per month. A premium hatchback, it is Maruti Suzuki’s third highest selling car after Alto and the WagonR, with current monthly sales of nearly 12,000 units. The auto major sells 350,000 units of Alto cars every year followed by 165,000 units of the WagonR.
In the Orissa market too, the car maker is the undisputed leader with monthly sales of about 1,000 units, compared to the overall sales of 2,100 units for all passenger car makers.
The company launched the new Swift in the Orissa market yesterday. Available in petrol as well as diesel variants, the petrol version gives 18.6 km per litre and the diesel variant 22.9 km.
The ex-showroom price (Bhubaneswar) of the petrol variant varies from Rs 4.54 lakh while the diesel one ranges from Rs 5.41 lakh to Rs 6.66 lakh.
