Maruti market share drops below 50% in April-August Man-made yarn imports up multi-fold in July

■ Company sells over 2 lakh cars less during five-month period

New Delhi, Sept. 15: Automakers Maruti Suzuki India and Tata Motors’ domestic passenger vehicle market share declined in April-August this year, while Hyundai and M&M witnessed gain in the same period, as per data compiled by industry body SIAM.

The country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) saw its market share dip by over 2 percentage points during the period under review and slip below 50 per cent in the domestic passenger vehicle segment in April-August.

The company sold 5,55,064 units this fiscal as compared with 7,57,289 units during April-August previous year. Its market share has come down from 52.16 per cent last year to 49.83 per cent in the April-August this fiscal. Overall PV sales during the April-August of the current fiscal stands at 11,09,930 units as compared to 14,51,647 units.

When contacted MSI Executive Director (Marketing and Sales) Shashank Srivastava told PTI that while cars and vans (A and C segment) have performed well, there has been a drop in sales of utility vehicles (B segment).

“This is because of constraint in supply of Ertiga having a large waiting period,” he added.

Besides, there is a shift in consumer preference in SUV segment towards petrol where currently the company does not have a variant, Srivastava said adding that MSI plans to introduce petrol variants of Vitara Brezza and S-Cross BS-VI later this fiscal.

Similarly, Tata Motors has reported sales of 60,093 units this fiscal so far as against 98,702 units last year. Its market share has fallen by 1.39 percentage points Thousands of protesters marched in front of Frankfurt’s IAA car show on Saturday to demand a swift end to combustion engines and a shift to environmentally friendly vehicles as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government prepares to unveil climate protection measures.

Police in Frankfurt said some 15,000, including many cyclists, took part in the march. Organisers put the number at 25,000 and said that around 18,000 cyclists had descended on the city.

Protesters took aim

to 5.41 per cent in the current fiscal as against 6.79 per cent last year.

On the other hand, Hyundai Motor saw its market share go up by 2.77 percentage points in the AprilAugust this year. The company sold a total of 2,03,729 units this fiscal as compared to 2,26,396 units. Despite selling less this fiscal, Hyundai’s market share has SUVs, seen by environmentalists as a highly polluting status symbol that has no place in cities.

“STOP SUV,” “SUV not cool,” and “We can’t replace our lungs” read some of the signs held by protesters.

Merkel’s conservatives and their Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners held talks on Friday about a package of measures expected to expedite Germany’s ambition to double the share of its power from renewable sources to 65 per cent by 2030.

The government is expected to unveil the costly measures on Sept. 20.

“Enough to policies that

risen from 15.59 per cent last fiscal to 18.36 per cent.

“2019 is a milestone year for Hyundai Motor as we launched three products in three different segments... The new launches have led to increase in customer traction, footfalls in showrooms and market share,” Hyundai Motor National Sales Head Vikas Jain said.

Similarly, Mahindra & prioritise cars in our cities,” said Ernst-Christoph Stolper, Deputy Head of Friends of the Earth Germany. “Pedestrians and cyclists need to conquer the urban spaces that belong to us.”

The protests have urged German carmakers to speed up a transition to electric and hydrogen vehicles, after the 2015 diesel scandal in which Volkswagen admitted to cheating emissions tests.

Germany’s big three, Volkswagen, MercedesBenz maker Daimler and BMW, assume that in 10 years about half of their cars will be emissions-free. Reuters

Mahindra (M&M) sold 89,733 units this fiscal so far as compared with 1,00,015 units in AprilAugust last financial year, still its market share has risen by 1.19 percentage points this fiscal to 8.08 per cent from 6.89 per cent.

Likewise, Toyota Kirloskar Motor sold 53,977 units this fiscal so far as against 67,051 units in the same period previous year. Its market share rose to 4.86 per cent from 4.62 per cent.

Other players like Renault, Skoda Auto, Volkswagen saw their market shares increase marginally during April-August this year.

Honda Cars sold 51,569 units as compared to 79,599 units last year, shrinking its market share marginally to 4.64 per cent this fiscal as against 5.48 per cent in the same period last fiscal.

Similarly, Ford India saw its market share go down marginally to 2.7 per cent from 2.81 per cent in AprilAugust last year. It sold 30,010 units this year as against 40,799 units.

Nissan Motor saw its market share dip to 0.73 per cent this fiscal as against 1.14 per cent in the year-ago period. The company sold a total of 8,070 units so far this fiscal as compared to 16,515 units. — PTI While imports of all products in the man-made fibre (MMF) value chain has steeply increased since the introduction of GST, destructing the domestic manufacturing industry, imports of polyester and viscose spun yarn have particulalry shot up multifold lately.

Imports of polyester yarn increased 193 per cent from 29,08,000 kg in July 2018 to 85,35,000 kg in July 2019. Similarly, viscose yarn imports shot up 342 per cent from 6,47,000 kg in July last year to 28,58,000 kg in July this year.

In the one-year period between July 2018 and June 2019, there has been substantial rise in the imports of all MMF products. MMF yarn and apparel imports have gone up 83 per cent and 84 per cent, respectively. “The main reason is the removal of countervailng duty post-GST, which overnight made imports more than 12 per cent cheaper. Import duty on fabrics and garments was subsequently increased by the government to control imports, hence the import of fabrics has been relatively under control, but garments due to FTAs could not be controlled by this measure,” said Sanjay K. Jain, Chairman, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry.

According to him, the woes have further aggravated this fiscal as the imports of polyester and viscose spun yarn in quantity terms increased by about 71 per cent and 78 per cent respectively during April- July 2019 as compared to a year ago period.

“Rising imports are impacting the domestic MMF yarn and garments manufacturers in a big way. It is also not in favour of government’s “Make in India” initiative and is acting as a big disincentive for the upstream industry from investing,” he said.

There are certain structural issues like relatively higher fibre, power and interest rates, which have made the upstream industry costlier and hence attracting cheaper imports from other countries.

Further under the GST regime, MMF textile products suffer from an inverted duty structure as MMF fibre, yarn and fabric attracts GST at the rate of 18 per cent, 12 per cent and 5 per cent respectively. This has resulted in heavy blockage of working capital plus GST paid on capital goods, services and certain inputs being added to cost in the hands of the MMF textile buyer. These taxes are not considered for calculation of refund of input tax credits and made MMF textiles costlier.

The textile industry has sought rationalization of GST rate for MMF products at 5 per cent.

“India, despite having world class fibre manufacturing capacities, is losing out to competitors like Bangladesh and Vietnam who import their fibre requirements. The textile industry cannot meet its $350 billion target unless the MMF segment of industry grows at double digit rate in the years to come," added Jain.