Car sales in India slumped 25.7 percent in February, the biggest fall in more than 12 years and the fourth consecutive monthly slide, an industry body said on Monday, as sluggish economic growth continues to weigh on demand.
The industry is expected to see it first decline in annual sales in a decade as high interest rates and rising fuel costs in Asia’s third-largest economy put off buyers in a market that was once one of the world’s most promising.
Automakers sold 158,513 cars in India last month, data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) showed. Car sales are down 4.6 percent for the first 11 months of the fiscal year ending in March, it said.
“There is no improvement in the market sentiment. People have more or less stopped discretionary purchases,” Sugato Sen, deputy director general of SIAM told Reuters.
“This has really impacted the bottom of the pyramid, people who buy the smaller cars,” he said, referring to the slowing economy that is expected to grow 5 percent, a decade low. “That is getting reflected in the numbers.”
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/03/11/india-autos-cars-idINDEE92A04R20130311
Our Finance Minister is now doing road shows in Hong Kong, Japan etc to attract investors ….. If the Finance Minister of India has to take to road shows, Indian economy is entering a ‘No show’ time ……
This is what i have been writing for the past one year ……..Wake up call for our ‘Learned Handicapped’ Politicians, who are disconnected from the ground realities
Rajendra Pratap Gupta
