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| Maruti Suzuki aims over 10% jump in FY10 sales |
| Press Trust of India / New Delhi Aug 25, 2009, 18:48 IST |
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The country's largest car maker, Maruti Suzuki India, is expecting its sales to grow by over 10 per cent during the current fiscal on the back of last year's low-base and is planning to upgrade all its models to Bharat Stage-IV emission norms compliant by March 2010.
"I think, we should reach 8 lakh units sales in this fiscal and that is our target. This will be a growth of over 10 per cent compared with last fiscal," Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Managing Director and CEO Shinzo Nakanishi told reporters here.
The company had sold over 7.22 lakh vehicles in the domestic market in 2008-09.
In 2009 fiscal, the industry went through a demand slump in the second half after global economic meltdown and as such the base for comparison is very low, Nakanishi said.
"...But we are expecting good growth in the upcoming festive season... We will ramp up production in the next few months," he said without giving details.
According to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), MSI has sold 2,64,936 units in the domestic market during the April-July period of this year, a jump of 13.70 per cent over the year-ago period.
On exports, Nakainishi said the company would cross 1-lakh mark in overseas sales.
"Probably we will end up selling about 1.1 lakh cars in the overseas markets," he said, adding in the last fiscal it had shipped just over 70,000 passenger vehicles from India.
The company is working on to make all its models Bharat Stage-IV emission norms compliant within this fiscal.
"Keeping ourselves in the market leader position, we will change all our models to BS-IV compliant before April 1, 2010, and the new Estilo is a part of that process," Nakanishi said.
The company today launched a new version of its small car Estilo with a fuel efficient engine at an introductory price between Rs 3.12 lakh and Rs 3.95 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).
The new 998cc petrol car is equipped with the latest K- series engines running 18.2 km in every litre of petrol.
The company has dropped the very successful brand name 'Zen' from the car as it feels that it does not suit the current taste of Indian youth, to whom this car is targeted.
Asked whether the company would also upgrade its once bread-and-butter models Maruti 800 to meet the emission standards, Nakanishi said: "Our engineers are capable of doing that, but we need time and money to do that, and also we have to see whether it is viable or not. We have not planned anything yet."
The company would also launch variants of the existing models in CNG mode, he said
MSI at present produces Bharat Stage-III, Bharat Stage-IV and Euro-V emission norms compliant K-series engines. It produces two different petrol engines — 1 litre (A-Star) and 1.2 litre (Ritz) — from the fully integrated engine facility, located at MSI's Gurgaon plant.
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