Commercial vehicle sales to stay muted, expect turnaround by mid-FY20: Tata

Tata Motors expects commercial vehicle (CV) business to remain in slow lane for the next few months and witness turnaround only by the second half of the next fiscal, a top company official said.

With demand expected to remain muted, the company aims to go slow in introducing BS-VI compliant CVs in the domestic market.

"My read is that the first half of the next fiscal particularly in CV segment is unpredictable," Tata Motors CEO and MD Guenter Butschek told PTI.

The growth in CV industry is related to the country's economy, he added.

"The government has launched various initiatives...all these factors are going to give us a positive outlook in the second half of the next fiscal," he said.

While the transition to BS-VI in passenger vehicles (PV) is on track, the company is going to be slow in introducing upgraded CVs in the market due to low demand, he added.

"For PVs the transition is going to happen in the next few weeks, in CV segment situation is slightly different not because we are running late but due to a different market situation," Butschek said.

In CV segment, the company is "not actively" going to switch to BS-VI before April 1, 2020, he added.

"Our read of the market is there will not be too much of a demand ..our BS-VI play starts on April 1, prior to that it is BS-IV products,"Butschek noted.

As per SIAM data, CV sales declined by 14.98 per cent to 61,907 units in November as compared with the year-ago period.

During April-November, CV sales have declined by 22.12 per cent to 5,04,080 units as against 6,47,278 units in same period of 2018-19.

In domestic market, the company reported a 29 per cent fall in CV sales to 2,17,130 units in the current financial year as compared with 3,05,395 units in April-November period of 2018-19.

Butschek said the company has embarked upon a "mission zero" to see that no BS-IV vehicle is left after April 1, 2020.

"By the end of this fiscal, Tata Motors is not going to have a BS IV vehicle left, neither any material which was initially ordered to manufacture BS-IV vehicles..weekly meeting now has become a daily affair," Butschek said.