Indian auto sector needs infrastructural changes for growth: JD Power

The slowdown in major auto markets like China, Europe and Brazil has offered India an opportunity to attract foreign investments. However, infrastructural improvement along with ease of doing business, and better policies are required to ensure this sector's growth, says JD Power, a US-based global marketing information services firm.

The slowdown may have affected the Indian market for some time, but long-term growth seems to be on track with a forecast of reaching seven million vehicles by 2020, feels JD Power. This is a correction from the nine million it had forecast earlier, but is not amiss among global automobile trends.

"Western Europe and Japan are saturated, China is slowing, people are pulling out from Russia and there are lot of issues in Brazil. So there are lot of hopes from India with people showing renewed interest in the auto-sector of the country," JD Power and Associates Senior Vice-President (Global Automotive) John Humphrey feels.

But he also cautioned that complexities of doing business for a foreign player in India needs to be resolved to unlock true potential in India.

JD Power Asia Pacific Executive Director Mohit Arora expressed a similar view point saying, "Another issue is the improvement of infrastructure, which is a key for the growth of the automotive sector."

On the note of automobile sales, there is better news for Auto Makers as the Reserve Bank of India has just announced a second cut in the repo rate in three months. Loan rates are expected to fall with this and will help increase sales. "Slashing of repo rate for the second time in a short span is definitely a reflection of a good financial environment, indicating that cost of funds would come down," said Mr. N Raja, Director and Senior Vice- President, Sales and Marketing, Toyota Kirloskar Motor.

"We observed that benefits of the cut made in the month of January were not passed on to customers. We hope this time the positive implications reach out to the customers with banks passing on the benefit to the consumers in the form of lower EMI for auto loans. This will further revive auto sales," he added on a cautious note.

At the awards ceremony, Toyota bagged seven awards. The Innova bagged four awards, including a special recognition award for winning the Initial Quality Study for 10 years.

Maruti Suzuki gave them stiff competition, bagging six. MRF won the original equipment tyre satisfaction award for the 11th time. In the two wheeler segment, Hero, TVS and Yamaha won three awards each in different categories, ranging from Initial quality study to automotive performance, execution and layout study.

The awards were decided after taking customer's feedback. South East Asian markets, starting with Australia all the way up to India including Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Taiwan among others were included.