The government and automakers had enforced shutdowns of factories to control the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. This has led a huge impact on Indian’s largest automaker, Maruti Suzuki, who reported a decline of 97.5 percent in production at 3714 units in May 2020. The company had manufactured 151,188 units during the same period in 2019, the company told in a regulatory filing.
Production of compact segment cars including WagonR, Celerio, Ignis, Swift, Baleno, and Dzire stood at 1950 units as against 84,705 units in May 2019, declining by 97.69 percent.
The production of utility vehicles which includes Vitara Brezza, Ertiga, XL-6, S-Cross was at 928 units as against as, dropping by 96.2 percent.
Industry experts believe the automakers are under serious pressure of a broken supply chain and labour shortage because of which manufacturing of vehicles at full scale is not possible. Furthermore, strict directives and SOPs by state governments are some other contributing factors.
The automaker known for its small car produced just 401 entry-level cars such as Alto and Espresso.
While it could manufacture only 62 units of light commercial vehicle Super Carry.
In terms of domestic sales, Maruti Suzuki observed a drop of 89% at 13,865 units in May 2020 owing to nation-wide coronavirus lockdown. The sales stood at 125,552 unit sales in the same month in 2019.
The company’s total sales also observed a decline of 86.2 percent to 18539 units in the month under review as compared to 134,641 units sold in May 2019.
