Car sales in India grew for the third successive month in July, raising hopes of gradual recovery for the industry following elections earlier this year.
Car sales were up by 6.52% on last year to 199,435 units in July. Sales of passenger vehicles grew by 2.53% in April-July 2014 over the same period last year
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The revival to sales prompted the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) to expect 5-10% growth in car sales in the 2014-15 fiscal year.
“People are coming back to showrooms. We are going to see higher growth in coming months,” said Vishnu Mathur, the society’s director-general, in remarks reported by the Business Standard newspaper.
“A lot of new models are lined up for launch ahead of the festival season. We are hoping there will be at least single-digit growth this year,” he added.
Mathur said that if the trend continues, he hoped that market growth in the 2015 fiscal year would be “anything between 5 and 10 per cent.”
Analysts say that the removal of political uncertainty following a general election in the spring and tweaks to taxes have helped revive the market.
Market Maruti Suzuki’s sales grew 19.9% in July to 90,093 cars. Hyundai’s sales grew 12.7% to 29,275 cars during the month.
However, demand concerns remain in the commercial vehicle sector. SIAM data showed that total commercial vehicles sales were down 15.5% year-on-year in the April-July period. In July, truck and bus sales were down 13.64% to 47,765 units, the 15th consecutive month of decline in commercial vehicle sales.
