For customers looking at buying a car next month, it will be an expensive start to the New Year with major car makers planning to hike their product prices from January onwards to partially offset the impact of rise in input costs. Maruti Suzuki said it is considering raising prices in the range of 2-4 per cent across the range of products from January onwards. It undertook the last price hike in October, 2013, the company said.
Hyundai Motor India too announced a price increase by up to Rs.25,000 from next month across its models. “In these adverse market conditions, the price increase is necessitated on account of increase in input costs, high cost of imports due to higher rupee depreciation and high cost of sales,” company Senior Vice-President (Sales and Marketing) Rakesh Srivastava said.
Both manufacturers said they had been absorbing most of the costs, but were now constrained to consider price increase across all models.
Honda Cars India too is mulling hike in prices next month onwards. However, the company is yet to decide on the quantum of increase, according to the company’s spokesperson.
Last week, German luxury car maker BMW had announced that it would raise the product prices in India by up to 5 per cent with effect from the first week of January. General Motors India had also announced a price hike by up to Rs.20,000 from January..
