Domestic retail sales of all vehicles sold in July grew by 34 percent to 1.55 million units compared to the same month in 2020, helped by ease in lockdown restrictions and the low base effect. July 2020 saw retail sales of 1.16 million.
Passenger vehicle (PV) sales grew 63 percent to 261744 units during July while two-wheeler volumes jumped 28 percent to 1.13 million units during the same month as against July last year.
Vinkesh Gulati, President - The Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA), said, “With the entire country now open, July continues to see robust recovery in auto retails as demand across all categories remains high. The low base effect also continues to play its part. Auto retails have now started narrowing the deficit compared to pre-COVID months. When compared to July’19, the gap reduced to 13 percent.”
In an internal survey conducted by FADA, 60 percent dealers of PVs said that they have at least two months waiting period for select variants. About 35 percent dealers also said that the waiting period is more than 4 months among select variants.
The retail numbers are derived from 86 percent of India’s regional transport offices (RTO) from all states and union territories except Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Lakshadweep and Telangana. These numbers represent actual sales to customers by dealers.
FADA noted that commercial vehicles continued to see an increase in demand especially in medium and heavy segments with the government rolling out multiple infrastructure projects.
The buzz around new launches significantly helped the PV segment while the rate of recovery in the two-wheeler segment remained sluggish with customers at the bottom of the pyramid suffering from poor disposable income and high cases of COVID-19 in the rural areas.
“The month of August begins on a positive note as demand and enquiry levels continue to improve across all categories. With IMD forecasting a normal monsoon during August- September period, sowing operations will pick up gradually. This will have a rub off effect on rural sales especially in tractor segment,” FADA added.
With auto companies cranking up production the inventory days at the dealerships has risen to 30-35 days for PVs and 20-25 days for two-wheelers.