India's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. said that supply-side disruptions continue to hurt the industry in the first quarter of the ongoing financial year.
“...in this quarter (April-June), the problem related to supply will continue,” Shashank Srivastava, senior executive director — sales and marketing at Maruti Suzuki told BloombergQuint in an interview.
The supply constraints are primarily due to the chip shortage, and it has resulted in pending bookings of around 3 lakh units for Maruti Suzuki, Srivastava said.
The industry is grappling with poor inventory which has more than halved compared to the normal levels. “Industry inventory levels are estimated to be 1.30-1.35 lakh, which during normal months is around 2.8-3 lakh units,” he said.
According to Srivastava, the industry still has no visibility on the easing of supplies.
It comes at a time when automakers were slowly ramping up production over the last few months. While Maruti Suzuki had to drop its output to 40% of normal levels in September last year, things had been improving since then.
BloombergQuint reported last month that Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resurgence of Covid-19 in China was likely to disrupt supplies again.
To be sure, Maruti Suzuki, which reported its monthly sales data on Sunday, saw its April wholesales drop 5.6% over the same period last year. Sales also dropped 11.2% month-on-month, suggesting the stress on the supply side has returned.
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