The country’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki fears that the demand in the auto sector may witness a drop in the financial year 2012, due to factors like inflation, ensuing rate hikes and high fuel prices.
Speaking on the sidelines of the launch ceremony of its luxury sports sedan, Maruti Suzuki Kizashi, company’s chief GM (Marketing), Shashank Srivastava stated, “Things like high inflation, rate hikes and the fuel price increase point out to tightening of the situation. We need to be wary and careful as the buoyancy we saw till now will definitely slow down a bit. There would be some resistance.”
Further elaborating the expected price hike Mr. Srivastava said, “Nobody had predicted that the auto industry will grow at 30 percent this year and 23-24 percent last year which included period of a slowdown. Similarly, it will be very difficult to estimate in numbers about the next year. ”
According to him, Maruti is confident of closing the current fiscal with the sales of up to 1.2 million units, as company’s monthly sales have been consistently touching around a lakh sunit since the starting of this year.
Moreover, the company plans to ramp-up its total capacity by 5 lakh units by the end of March 2013, taking the total capacity to up to 17 lakh units.
