Dealers body asks Siam to go by retail sales

PUNE: The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations or FADA has urged Society of Indian Automobile Manufact-urers or Siam, the top trade lobby to start reporting monthly sales data on the basis of actual registrations based on road ministry's Vahan platform instead of wholesales from factory gates.

FADA President Ashish Harsharaj Kale, in a letter to Siam President Rajan Wadhera, said reporting retail numbers is also a norm which is followed internationally and would help in the betterment of the Indian auto industry as well.

“Both dealers and component manufacturers also felt that it would have been easier to predict the ongoing slowdown in auto sales if retail numbers were reported, helping all in their inventory management and would have kept all better placed in facing these dynamic times,” Kale wrote in the letter.

FADA has been advocating this from November 2018 and many of its members have also done the same with their respective original equipment manufacturer (OEM's) and have received a positive response of accepting it, given if it becomes an industry practise, he added.

“Hence, I request you to please use your good offices to impress upon all the members of Siam as well to report retail sales which is now available in VAHAN, instead of factory despatches and graduate to market share calculation of the industry and of dealer partners by registration data instead of wholesale despatches,” Kale  said.

As per the data released by Siam earlier this week, vehicle sales across categories saw steepest fall on record by 23.55 per cent at 18,21,490 units in August.