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In an indication of demand recovery, leading truck makers Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland and VE Commercial Vehicles have reported strong year-on-year (YoY) sales growth for October.
The country’s top commercial vehicles (CV) maker, Tata Motors, reported a 3 per cent increase in its medium and heavy CV (M&HCV) sales at 5,033 units last month, against 4,893 units in October 2019. Its intermediate and light CV (I&LCV) volumes grew 12 per cent YoY to 4,286 units (3,832 units).
The No 2 M&HCV maker, Ashok Leyland, saw sales rise 13 per cent to 3,762 units (3,340 units). Its light commercial vehicle (LCV) sales grew 11 per cent to 5,004 units, helped by its new pick-up ‘Bada Dost’.
VE Commercial Vehicles (a Volvo-Eicher joint venture) recorded domestic M&HCV sales of 3,815 units (3,309 units), up 15.3 per cent.
“About two months ago, there were still concerns around the pace of recovery in CVs,” PB Balaji, Group Chief Financial Officer, Tata Motors, said last week while discussing the company’s performance. “But from September, very clearly, we have been seeing growth coming back. I&LCV started to see momentum from September and M&HCV has also come back to demand growth.”
Within M&HCV, the tipper segment did well, thanks to mining, and road and port-related projects kicking off, he said. The cargo segment is also improving, he added.
Financing looks up
“Even more reassuring is that the financing concerns are starting to abate. Once the moratorium was over people saw things were not as bad as they thought and a lot of people were wanting to repay loans on time. Therefore, we are seeing some improvement in the loan recovery rate and that is ensuring more finance coming into the CV segment as well.
“If this trend were to continue, I would expect to see most of the issues in the CV segment getting resolved in the next three months or so,” said Balaji.
Daimler India Commercial Vehicles, the Indian arm of the German auto major, had reported growth in BharatBenz truck sales for the September quarter.
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