Maruti Suzuki reported one of the worst auto sales declines in recent years, with sales in India falling 35.1% to 98,210 vehicles in July 2019.
The company had seen a decline of 17.3% in its India retail sales in the previous month, which stood at 1.11 lakh.
The decline in July was similar across the segments, but the ‘compact’ segment — including big hitters like new WagonR, Swift, Dzire and Baleno, did better with a decline of only 22.7%.
However, this can also be attributed to the fact that Maruti started added WagonR numbers to the ‘compact’ category from February onwards, and therefore, on a like-to-like basis, the decline in compact would be comparable to that seen in other segments as well.
The total compact segment sales fell to 57,512 units from 74,373. Assuming that the company sold about 10,000 WagonRs this time, the like-to-like decline would be 36.1% — in line with other segments.
On a positive note, the company sold 6,292 Balenos to Toyota in July. The cars are being rebadged as Glanza by Toyota with minor changes.
Tellingly, even as the passenger auto sales were a bloody affair, sales of its only commercial vehicle — Super Carry — increased by 0.5% to 1,732.
Export sales were down 9.4% at 9,258.
Including exports, the total sales of the company was 1,09,264 units, down 33.5% from 1,64,369 a year ago.