Continued excise duty cut and festival offers started last month have helped the domestic car sales to grow by 15 per cent in August year-on-year to around 1.54 lakh units against 1.33 lakh units in the corresponding period a year ago.

According to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the improved trend is expected to continue in the current month with discounts and more new launches.

“There is a lot of hope this festival season and we expect it to be better than last two years’ festival seasons, not only in passenger cars segment, but also in two and three-wheeler sales,” said Vishnu Mathur, Director-General, SIAM.

He said the commercial vehicles’ sales that have been down for the last 32 months is also closing in the gap from negative to positive because of the improvement in the freight movements.

As per the latest data released on Wednesday, the total commercial vehicles sales were down by six per cent year-on-year in August to 48,473 units against 51,344 units in August 2013.

However, the medium and heavy commercial vehicles saw some positive signs during August with sales going up to 16,955 units against 15,468 units during the same month last year.

The three-wheeler sales also grew by 23 per cent to 52,543 units in August against 42,541 units in the corresponding month last month.

Led by companies such as Hero MotoCorp and Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India, the total two-wheelers sales grew by 19 per cent to 13.45 lakh units during last month against 11.28 lakh units in August 2013.

While the motorcycle sales grew by 14 per cent (9.10 lakh versus 7.95 lakh units) year-on-year, scooter sales grew by 30 per cent year-on-year to 3.69 lakh units (2.83 lakh units), the SIAM data said.

The grand total of all categories also grew by around 18 per cent to 16.60 lakh units in August against 14.12 lakh units in August 2013.

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