India's car sales drop for ninth time

Car companies sold 131,163 cars in India last month, down 7.4% from the same month last year, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) said.

The car market, seen as an important guide to India's overall economic health, has recorded a fall in sales for an unprecedented nine consecutive months.

"There's general gloom with the economic slowdown, high interest rates and high fuel costs," SIAM's deputy director-general Sugato Sen said. "It's all deterring buyers," he said.

The data is the latest in a string of grim figures underscoring the weak state of Asia's third-largest economy.

The market's downturn is in sharp contrast to the previous decade when car sales grew by between 20% and 30%, prompting foreign companies ranging from Ford to Volkswagen to make a beeline for the country as they sought to boost sales globally.

Total bus and truck sales, another important economic health barometer, fell in July by 14.9% to 55,301 units from a year ago.

Meanwhile, sales of motorcycles, a popular means of personal transport, slipped by 1.5% to 809,312 units.

A sharp fall in the Indian rupee has dashed hopes of interest rate cuts anytime soon to kick-start consumer demand and the economy, which grew at a decade-low of five percent last year.

Last year, domestic passenger car sales fell by 6.7% to 1.89m units from a year earlier, the first contraction in a decade. SIAM has declined to set a sales target for this year.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge