Aiming Higher

The Indian manufacturing sector, of which the CV industry is a part, is set to gain in the global wars as companies look to shift out of China.

- Bhushan Mhapralkar

The Indian CV industry has started the 2019-20 financial year with a bang. Describing the start of the new fiscal as promising, Girish Wagh, President – Commercial Vehicles Business Unit, Tata Motors, expressed that their FY2018-19 cumulative sales registered a growth of 17 per cent. It were the highest (with the sales of 468,692 units) since 2012-13. Wagh attributed the sales growth to tippers, which grew 12 per cent in March and ended the year with a robust growth of 53 per cent on the back of the infrastructure growth momentum in the country. SCV and pickup sales grew 11 per cent in March 2019, and 24 per cent for the year on the back of the growing e-commerce sector, rural growth and Swachch Bharat initiatives, according to Wagh. With the launch of electric buses across the country and the beginning of the school season, Tata Motors witnessed its commercial passenger carrier segment grow twoper cent in March. In the last fiscal, the segment grew by four-per cent. If the journey of Tata Motors through the last fiscal, and into the current fiscal reflects the health of the CV industry, and in-turn of the economy, the situation globally is reaching an interesting stage. With the US imposing higher tariffs on Chinese imports and China retaliating in kind, global gross domestic product (GDP) growth is anticipated to slow down from 3.7 per cent in 2018 to 3.2 per cent or lower in 2019, depending on trade war scenario conditions.