New Delhi– Supply as well as demand constraints impacted India’s auto sector sales in December 2021 on a year-on-year basis. Similarly, the sector’s current off-take of passenger vehicles, two-and-three wheelers, were far behind the 2019 sales levels.
In terms of PVs, challenges pertaining to electronic components’ availability dragged sales lower on a year-on-year basis in December. Sales of passenger vehicles fell to 219,421 units in December as compared to 252,998 units sold during the corresponding month of 2020.
The data furnished by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) does not include sales figures from some key players such as Tata Motors.
Segment-wise, a total of 112,873 passenger cars were sold in the domestic market in December, down from 146,864 units sold in the like period of 2020.
The sales of other sub-categories such as utility vehicles (UV) grew whereas vans’ degrew on a year-on-year basis.As per the data, UV sales rose to 97,137 units from 94,787 units, on the other hand, the off-take of vans declined to 9,411 units from 11,347 units in the year-ago period.Besides, two-wheelers’ sales were lower in December 2021 at 1,006,062 units from 1,127,917 units sold in the like month of 2020.
However, three-wheelers’ sales during the month under review rose to 28,111 units from 22,476 units sold during December 2020. Overall, the domestic automobile sectors’ off-take representing the sales of passenger vehicles, two-wheelers, three-wheelers and quadricycle fell to 1,253,604 units from 1,403,391 units sold during the same period of last year.
Furthermore, the data showed that exports were flat on a YoY basis.The overall exports, including PVs, two and three-wheelers and quadricycles rose to 463,176 units from 463,802 units during the same period of last year.
“Demand of passenger vehicle segment was largely affected due to supply constraints while the two-wheeler segment was majorly impacted due to subdued demand. Sales of passenger vehicles in Q3 has been the lowest in five years, while for the two-wheelers it has been the lowest in nine years,” said Rajesh Menon, Director General, SIAM.
“Only the ‘Heavy Goods’ segment in ‘Commercial Vehicles’ have shown positive growth compared to Q3 of previous two years. Sales of buses and three-wheelers continue to be a concern. Barring 2020, the sales of commercial vehicles in Q3 has been lowest in last 5 years and sales of three-wheelers, barring 2020, has been the lowest in last 13 years.”
According to Hemal Thakkar, Director, Crisil Research on SIAM data: “… it is very clear that passenger vehicle dealers continue to have very lean inventory and demand continues to outpace supply.”
“In case of two wheelers there is a slowdown in demand resulting in high inventory at dealers end despite two continuous months of correction by OEMs. CV sales have seen consistent recovery as economic activities continue to show consistent improvement while 3 wheelers on the back of improved mobility have seen some pick up in sales. However, impact of Omicron is something that needs to be very closely monitored in the coming months.” (IANS)
