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Many of us are writing about it, many of us are hearing about it: the slowdown in automobile market of India. And now it’s confirmed by many automobile manufactures by shutting down their production lines. Yes it has happened, the demand for petrol cars is too low that it is very difficult to clear the stocks of already built petrol cars and thus it makes no sense to keep on producing them. On the other hand some diesels are also facing problems because of overall market slow down.

“We are having some amount of inventory for our petrol cars and it has gone up to over 30 days. To control the stock from piling up further, we have stopped production of our entire range of petrol cars from June 16,” Shekar Viswanathan, Deputy Managing Director, (Commercial), said.

“Depending upon the demand and inventory situation, we may shut down our plant for 2-3 days next month. Currently we are monitoring the inventories at both raw material and vehicles production sides,” Rajeev Kapoor, President and CEO, Fiat India, said.

“Given the market scenario, we need to align our production. We will have a block closure from June 22 to June 24 at our commercial vehicle plant in Pune,” a Tata Motors spokesperson said.

These are the statements which create a matter of concern. Also Toyota officials are not mentioning how long the production of petrol cars will be withheld. Maruti Suzuki will also be having its week-long shut down from next week but for annual maintenance purpose. Also a Maruti spokesperson said that they have already stopped production of PETROL variants of Alto, 800, A-Star, Estilo and Omni for three days to prevent inventories.

This situation critical and it is expected to worsen further. Some may say it is due to global markets are slowing down but what we feel is different. As only petrol cars are being held from production, it is clearly showing the effect of rise in petrol prices. Also companies may be aligning themselves for coping up the demand of diesel cars instead of building inventory of petrol cars. Is anyone hearing out there dear Finance Ministry?

Source – Financial Express