Honda growth in India to take a hit

Kolkata: Passenger car maker Honda was expected to face de-growth in India sales primarily due to shift of the market from diesel to petrol, the company's India chief said.

"This fiscal ending March, the growth will in the negative territory. This is due to the fact that the market has shifted to petrol and we had a lot of diesel inventories. This has to be corrected," president and CEO of Honda Cars India Yoichiro Ueno said.

"Due to demonetisation in November, we had a bit tough phase," Ueno said. There was a substantial drop in footfalls in Honda showrooms across the country which had resulted in sales getting affected.

"But the next fiscal, we expect a stable economic growth and we had started to see recovery from January. Another cause of being optimistic is the fall in interest rates will help boost sales," he said.

Last fiscal, the company sold 1.9 lakh cars in the domestic market and exported 5000 units to the African countries. Launching the W-RV SUV here today, he said that the car had already received 4500 bookings which was very good.

With Honda enjoying fourth position in terms of market share among passenger car makers, the company would continue to launch new premium products to increase the portfolio.

The company was in the process of acquiring land in Gujarat for its third plant. "Our two plants at Greater Noida in UP and Tapukara in Rajasthan was having a combined capacity of 2.4 lakh units per annum," he said.

"So there is no immediate need to set up the third plant. This is for future plans", Ueno said. About GST, he said that tax incidence was likely to be the same as now, he said.