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Industry analysts attributed this to the focus on improving finance availability for consumers as well as dealers, marketing efforts to liquidate BS-IV inventory and efforts to make BS-VI compliant vehicles available ahead of schedule.
The company’s wholesale volume increased marginally to 139,844 units during the month and its market share went up from 51.9% in the three months to December 2019 and 49.8% in the first half of this fiscal. In January, passenger vehicle sales in the domestic market fell 6% on-year to 262,596 units.
Automakers in India report wholesale dispatches to dealers and not retail sales.
“We have stopped BS-IV production completely. We have three to four days of BS-IV stocks,” Maruti Suzuki chairman RC Bhargava told ET earlier this week. “But, in the industry last month, dispatches came down because they didn’t have enough BS-VI cars. If you send too many BS-IV cars, there would have been the question of unsold inventory. So, they had to pull back.”
Maruti Suzuki has upgraded nearly a dozen models to BS-VI emission standards. Its range of BS-VI compliant petrol models last month included Alto, Eeco, S-Presso, Celerio, WagonR, Swift, Baleno, Dzire, Ertiga and XL6. These account for three-fourths of sales. Its cumulative sales of BS-VI vehicles stood at around half a million units. The company unveiled BS-VI compliant petrol variants of Vitara Brezza and Ignis at the Auto Expo.
“Maruti Suzuki has tied up with several banks over the past few months, which has helped ease liquidity constraints of buyers as well as dealers. This is now reflecting in sales numbers,” a senior executive said on condition of anonymity.
Commenting on the market conditions, Shashank Srivastava, executive director (marketing and sales), Maruti Suzuki, said, “We have seen some improvement in demand in the last four months, which makes us cautiously optimistic. However, we have to wait and see how customers react to increased prices post-BS-VI.”
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