India’s largest Auto Expo will launch 70 new cars for domestic market next month..,

Kolkata, Jan 20 (HS): Looking for a review of the country’s two billion USD Automobile industry this year, after its sales nosedived last year, the country’s biggest biannual ‘Auto Expo- 2020’ will be held in Geater Noida from 7 to 12 February showcasing over 600 passenger cars and commercial vehicles for the first time.

Announcing the organization of such a  prestigious Motor Show, Sugato Sen, Deputy Director-General, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers(SIAM), said here this afternoon that Auto Show had been the most effective launch pad for a large number of key brands of both passenger cars and commercial vehicles in Indian market where a number of new products were being unveiled every year to create some sort of history in the automobile industry.

Referring to the present moribund condition of the Indian automobile industry primarily because of the economic slowdown, Sen said since the second half of last year the overall sales of new vehicles had nose-dived forcing several car manufacturers not only to limit and reschedule their production lines but also showing the doors to many employees to halt further losses.

As a result, the overall turnover of the industry had come down to Rs 8,21,000 crores last year from well over  Rs 10 lakh crores earlier.’ We are currently passing through the worst period of car sales of the past two decades’, Sen said and hoped that following the beginning of a speedy recovery of the national economy, ‘the car industry would turnaround soon and once again look up for better days’.

Later during a separate interaction on the sidelines of the meet, Sen told Hindusthan Samachar that after experiencing negative growth of around 5 percent in terms of passenger car sales in India last year, in the current month they had recorded a marginal growth of about 3 percent.

Describing such a trend as the only silver lining of the huge industry, he said, however, in terms of the Commercial vehicles the sales growth was only about 0.4 percent compared to a loss of  5.7 percent late last year.

About the week-long Auto Expo, he said though the number of stalls this year had been reduced to  98 from 119 last year, as many as 70 odd new cars, comprising the petrol, diesel, electric and even hybrid version would be launched in this year’s extravagant show, which was likely to be inaugurated by Union Surface Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari.