Indians purchased fewer vehicles last month than they did in April 2019

The total vehicle retail increased by 37 percent year-on-year (YoY) last month with all categories — two-wheelers, three-wheelers, commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles — in the green, the data released by the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) on Thursday showed.

While the two-wheeler retail sales went up by 38 percent YoY, commercial vehicle, passenger vehicle and tractor sales increased by 52 percent, 25 percent and 26 percent, respectively. The three-wheeler sales saw the highest jump of 96  percent.

FADA, however, noted that the April 2020 and April 2021 had witnessed nationwide lockdown during first and second wave of COVID. Hence, the YoY comparison with these two years does not truly represent the state of auto sales.

"The month of April saw similar Auto Retail figures as March’22. While YoY comparison with April’21 shows all categories in green with high growth rate, it is important to note that both April’21 and April’20 were affected by nation-wide lockdown due to phase 1 and 2 of the Covid wave which witnessed no to negligible business. Hence a better comparison will be with April’19 which was a normal pre-covid month," said FADA President Vinkesh Gulati.

Auto retail has still not recovered from the jitters of COVID-19 when compared with the April 2019 numbers with the total vehicle retail still down by 6 percent.

Except passenger vehicles and tractors, which were up by 12 percent and 30 percent, all the other categories like two-wheelers, three-wheelers and commercial vehicles were down by 11 percent, 13 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.

It said the global auto industry continues to witness supply crunch as semi-conductor shortage along with high metal prices and container

shortage prevails. "Customers of PV segment hence continue to witness long waiting period."

FADA said that the Reserve Bank of India's move of increasing repo rate by 40 basis points has clearly taken everyone off guard. "This move will apply brakes and dampen the sentiments further," it said.

It added that Skymet predicting a normal monsoon is a positive for rural demand which so far has shown a lacklustre performance. "Tractor and two-wheeler sales are likely to improve if monsoons are evenly distributed," it said.