M&HCV Sales down by 55 percent in April
Published On May 11, 2017
The starting month of the FY18 did not begin with a positive note as medium and heavy commercial vehicle sector was hit hard. The sales in this segment sharply declined by 55 percent from 23,515 units sold in April 2016 to just 10,602 units registered last month. According to SIAM, the overall commercial vehicle sales dropped by 22.93 percent in April 2017 as against last year same month.
The prime reason for this severe impact is the Supreme Court’s verdict with regard to the ban on sales and registration of BS-III vehicles starting April 1st 2017. This led to increase in price of BS-IV vehicles and triggered negative buying sentiments that eventually resulted in the fall off.
Where Tata Motors’ domestic sales were down by about 36 percent from 21,783 units to 16,017 units, Ashok Leyland too saw a steep decline of 43 percent from 10,182 units to 7,083 units. The truck segment of Mahindra & Mahindra also witnessed sales drop of 41 percent to mere 278 units in April 2017. Eicher Motors trucks and buses too reported negative sales in the month recording 3,077 units as against 5,326 units in April 2016, a drop of 42.22 percent.
However, a little respite came from Light Commercial Vehicles segment that witnessed a miniscule growth of 1.87 percent in sales. Expert predicts that this trend would continue to wreak havoc in coming 6-8 months while the light commercial vehicle segment would see more improvement due to implementation of GST. On the other hand, rating agency ICRA predicts 6.8 percent growth due to higher budgetary infusion towards the infrastructure and rural sectors.
