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Domestic passenger car sales fell 7.59 per cent in January year-on-year to 1.60 lakh units, compared with 1.73 lakh units in the same month last year.
This was the fourth consecutive month of negative sales for passenger cars, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) said on Tuesday.
Sales of utility vehicles also declined 6.27 per cent to 45,941 units (49,015 units) during the month , SIAM said in its monthly report.
Commercial vehicle sales fell 21 per cent to 49,987 units (63,218 units).
Positive note However, the industry body was positive and said some categories are still in the negative zone but better in terms of growth, such as passenger cars and medium and heavy commercial vehicles.
“Performance is not good, but is turning positive on a monthly basis. For example, if the decline was 30 per cent for a category last month, it has now become 20 per cent.
With demand from mining and infrastructure reviving, we hope demand for heavy commercial vehicles will also come back,” Vishnu Mathur, Director-General, SIAM, told reporters here.
He added that if the Government announces any excise duty cuts during the interim budget, which will be a vote-on account, it will bring some benefits to the industry. He said even rolling back excise duty to 10 per cent (from 12 per cent right now) for small cars and 27 per cent (from 30 per cent) for utility vehicles will help the industry.
“The Government has done it earlier (excise duty cut) during a vote-on-account in 2008-09 and this will not be new,” Mathur said, adding that only the two-wheeler category is doing well because of a bumper crop.
Total sales rise According to the report, two-wheeler sales grew 9 per cent to 13.13 lakh units (12.06 lakh units). While scooter sales grew 28 per cent to 3.23 lakh units (2.52 lakh units), motorcycle sales grew 4 per cent to 9.22 lakh units (8.86 lakh units).
Led by an increase in two-wheeler sales, total sales of all categories grew 3.75 per cent to 16.19 lakh units (15.61 lakh units).
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