Automobile sales hit 60-month low in December

These are worrying times for the automobile industry. Demonetisation has hit them hard. Total automobile sales which include commercial vehicles, passenger vehicles and two & three wheelers hit their lowest level since January 2012 at 1,523,224 units in December 2016. It's a sharp decline of 16 per cent --  a year ago, automobile sales stood at 18,13,327 units,. The previous month, when this demonetisation exercise started, was no exception with 4.2 per cent decline.  This was not the plight earlier as the months before November saw good growth of 7-8 per cent in sales with double-digit growth witnessed in the month of August and September 2016.

The note ban impacted the two and three wheeler segment the most. Sales plunged significantly, around 22 per cent in December to 11,56,084, over the corresponding month in the previous year. The month of November saw a decline of around 6 per cent year-on-year. None of the segments witnessed any fall in their sales, on a y-o-y basis, in this calendar year till October.   

The next segment to fall prey to demonetisation was commercial vehicles with a y-o-y sales decline of 6 per cent and 7 per cent respectively in November and December. This was followed by the passenger vehicle segment where sales dropped from 3,05,253 units in November to 3,05,175 units in December. The pain is expected to remain for a while.

Sales in units