Maruti Suzuki India has reported that it is confident of maintaining its double-digit sales growth for the fiscal year ending March 2017. The company said that its double-digit target can still be achieved, despite production losses of 30,000 units due to fire in one of its major production facilities at Manesar.
“Whatever losses we had we will make up in the next few months as our production engineers are working on how to increase the production,” said Mr. R.S. Kalsi, Executive Director (Marketing & Sales) at Maruti Suzuki India. The company is also setting up its third plant in Gujarat with a capacity of 2.5 lakh units.
“The trial run would begin in the period of January-March 2017 and commercial production from next quarter,” said Kalsi.
The company has seen a growth of 6.4 percent in retail sales for April-June of the current financial year. The growth in sales was mainly fueled by the compact segment which comprises of the Swift, Estilo, Ritz, Swift Dzire and Baleno, rising 11 percent to 46,554 units as opposed to 41,926 units compared to the same period in May last year. The market share of Maruti Suzuki grew by 1.8 percentage points to 46.8 percent, compared to 45 percent of the previous year.
In the passenger car space, Maruti dominated the competition with a market share of 52.7 percent, up by 1.3 percent over last year. However, sales of Alto and WagonR declined by 5.6% to 33,105 units as compared to 35,062 units in May last year. Sales of mid-sized sedan Ciaz grew by 3.5% to 5,188 units in May.
Kalsi seems confident of the company’s vision to hit 2 million sales annually. Maruti has two more products lined up for launch this year – Ignis and Baleno RS. The company is also planning to introduce 15 new vehicles in the next few years.
