Reflecting continued weakness in consumer sentiment the overall vehicle registrations in September 2019 fell 12.9% as compared to the same period last year despite the onset of the festival season and offer of unprecedented discounts to prop up sales.
As per data collected by the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations of India (FADA) a total of 13,75,314 vehicles were registered at 1,188 RTOs in the country out of 1,461 RTOs as compared to 15,79,191 vehicles registered in September 2018.
These numbers do not have figures from 352 RTOs mainly from Andhra Pradesh (AP), Kerala (KL), Madhya Pradesh(MP) & Telengana (TS). While AP, MP snd TS are not yet on Vahan, the comparative figures of KL for September 18 were not available, hence were not taken for comparative calculation.
On a year on year basis 2-wheeler registration was down by 12.1%, Commercial Vehicles (CV) was down by 18.5%, Passenger Vehicles (PV)registrations reduced by 20.1% and 3-Wheeler saw a marginal growth of 1.8%.
Ashish Harsharaj Kale, president FADA said, “FADA believed September to be a transition month into positivity with continued monsoon and measure after measures being announced by the Government. The auto industry retails were under pressure during the month and the de-growth was on expected lines.”
“The continued heavy monsoons in major geographies and the Shraddh period also contributed to this sales lag. The complete effects of the positive measures announced by the government was still not visible at the retail levels in the month of September,” he said.
He said October will be a crucial month which will indicate the trends for H2 and measure the effects of an abundant monsoon and the various government measures announced recently.
“Dealer confidence and current trends indicates an improving situation and if these trends hold good, it could be an indicator of the slowdown bottoming out and stability returning to auto retails,” Mr. Kale said.