New Delhi, Aug. 8: Maruti Udyog Limited today said infrastructure bottlenecks might pull down Indian car market’s global competitiveness.

Maruti identified hardening interest rates, increased competition and commodity price volatility as risks the company is facing.

Releasing the company’s annual report for 2005-06, managing director Jagdish Khattar said, “India has the potential to manufacture compact cars competitively for the rest of the world .... (however) infrastructure constraints could prove to be a bottleneck in the Indian car industry’s global aspirations.”

“The limited capacity of our ports and railways, for example, could constrain our capability to deliver factory-fresh cars intact in large numbers in the exports markets,” he said in the annual report.

The report also said, “Maruti is exposed to a variety of risks because of the change in demand dynamics as a result of increase in commodity prices, crude oil prices, interest rates and currency exchange rates.”

In an effort to mitigate these risks and ensure returns on its huge investments in India, the company was working on introducing five models in the country. Khattar lauded the 8 per cent excise duty cut on small cars in this year’s budget and said this would help realise the government’s plan to boost growth in the segment and encourage fresh investments in it.

However, he added that car companies “will need to scale up their volumes, which in turn will enable them to attain global cost and quality on a sustained basis”.