Bump Ahead

New Delhi, Jan. 2 (PTI): The high growth rates of four-wheeler sales in India cooled off in 2005 as all segments, including passenger cars and commercial vehicles, saw sales plummeting to single digit figures. However, two-wheelers kept up the momentum.

According to year-end figures released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), car sales growth dropped to just 6.9 per cent in 2005 from 24.6 per cent at the end of December 2004.

Many carmakers in India, including Tata Motors, saw demand slowing down during the year. There were other factors like the floods in Maharashtra and Gujarat and stricter emission norms, which hit the demand. The emission norms had led to price rise.

Total car sales in 2005 stood at 8.58 lakh units against 8.02 units in 2004. Utility vehicles and multi-purpose vehicles also could not insulate themselves from the slowdown, with sales growth dropping to 8.9 per cent and 3.5 per cent respectively from as high as 25.3 per cent and 11.6 per cent in 2004.

For commercial vehicles, a massive slowdown in demand for medium-and heavy commercial vehicles saw overall growth wilting to 9.04 per cent in 2005 from 28.3 per cent in 2004. This segment was worst hit as sales growth dropped to a low of 3.7 per cent from 28.6 per cent. A total of 1.97 lakh units were sold in 2005 against 1.9 lakh units in 2004.

Motorcycles sales continued their blazing run, although scooters and mopeds remained a pale shadow.

Motorcycles sales in 2005 grew 17 per cent to 55.7 lakh from 47.5 lakh in 2004. Even as the growth rate declined by around 2 per cent year-on-year, 2005 figures were no mean achievement as the base was high. Scooter sales, which had been looking up for sometime on account of Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India, went into negative growth, ironically because of the same factor.