Tata Motors sales decline 4% to 38,361 units in May

Tata said market continues to remain weak and demand has still not picked up

Home-grown auto major Tata Motors on Friday reported a 4.39 per cent decline in total sales in May at 38,361 units compared to 40,123 units in the same month last year.

Domestic sales of Tata Motors' commercial and passenger vehicles declined by 3.45 per cent to 34,461 units last month as compared to 35,695 units in May 2016, Tata Motors said in a statement.

Sales of passenger vehicles in the domestic market grew 27 per cent to 10,855 units last month. This was due to continued strong demand for the Tata Tiago, the Tata Tigor and the Tata Hexa.

In the commercial vehicles segment, the company's domestic sales were down 13 per cent at 23,606 units last month, the auto major said.

The company said market continues to remain weak and the demand has still not picked up. There are early signs of retails of BS4 vehicles but it has still been slow.

Overall sales of Tata Motors' MHCV trucks were at 6,522 units in May 2017, a decline of 40 per cent over May 2016 base.

"The sale in MHCV was affected primarily due to severe global supply constraints of Fuel Injection Pumps for BS4 engines," the company said.

ILCV trucks sales were 12 per cent down at 2,368 units last month compared to 2,697 units sold last year in May, impacted by late supplies of fuel injector systems.

"These issues are expected to be resolved on short notice with full capacity available as of July 2017," Tata Motors said.

Sale of small cargo vehicles (SCV) were up 10 per cent at 10,572 units as against 9,645 units in May 2016.

"On the SCV and Pick-up segments, there is a strong sales recovery with full availability of BS4 products and good market response to new variants like Xenon Yodha and Ace Mega," the company said.

The company's sales from exports declined 12 per cent at 3,900 units last month compared to 4,428 vehicles in May 2016.

The company said exports have been impacted in April and May due to retail drop of SCV in Sri Lanka after steep increase in import tariffs in late 2016, as well as fall in Nepal demand in the build-up to their elections.