Retail auto sales showed improvement across categories in June, registering an overall growth of 23% year-on-year with the easing of lockdowns which led to the reopening of dealerships across most of the states and districts. However, the sales across categories continued to be depressed compared with the 2019 levels, declining by 28%. Compared with 2019, every segment barring tractors saw a decline, according to data released by Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (Fada) on Thursday.
Though retail sales started to gain some traction in June – as they did last year with the opening up after lockdowns – and the trend may continue if there’s no third wave, they are still far below the wholesales for the month reported by the manufacturers earlier. The slower retail growth compared with the wholesales could be because reopening of dealerships in several districts happened only after the first fortnight of June.
For instance, Maruti Suzuki, which reported a y-o-y growth of 141% in wholesales in June, saw retail sales growth of just 11%. Similarly, Hyundai Motor India’s wholesale growth in June was 90% but retail sales growth was at 42%.
The near-term outlook is that the positive momentum from June is likely to continue in July and with the southern parts of the country opening up, further pick-up in demand could be seen. However, on a longer term, the industry is unlikely to see retail numbers comparable with FY19, which was a bad year for the auto industry in terms of sales.
