India has gone past Brazil to become the sixth largest maker of automobile in the world. This figure has been arrived at on the basis of a data that has been compiled for the first half of 2011, as per the report of the international organization for the manufacturers of motor vehicles.
The organization has also stated that the Indian manufactures are contributing to the country maintaining a steady growth. If this growth rate can be sustained, India will achieve the No.3 position in the global automobile market within the coming five years. This is expected to happen irrespective of the fact that spiraling interest rates as well as continuously increasing fuel prices have acted as a negative catalyst in sales of automobiles in the Indian domestic market. It was just in the year 2009 that India had overtaken Spain in terms of annual production of automobiles to reach the No.7 slot in the global list. It is now being projected that India is going to go past Korea, Germany and Japan by the year 2017, when it is expected to sell at least 7 million vehicles. This is a much improved projection compared to initial estimates that had suggested that the No.3 position could be acquired by India only in 2020. India produced 2.04 million cars in the time period between January to June 2011. This figure was 20% more than the cars rolled out from Brazil, which stood at 1.71 million.
China is still maintaining its position at the top in terms of car production by rolling out 9.16 million vehicles till June. However, India has significantly improved its share in terms of vehicle production vis-a-vis China in the first half of 2011. Till 2010, India was producing only one-sixth of the total number of Cars that China produced. However, by the middle of 2011, India has reached a position where it produces more than one-fifth of the total vehicles that are manufactured in China. The market share of India in terms of global production of vehicles has improved marginally to touch 5% as compared to the 4.5% it was at the end of 2010.
Business confidence in the Indian auto market is getting a boost because of the fact that the growth of the automobile market of India has been among the fastest in the world till the month of October 2011. This has been achieved despite the fact that both the domestic and global markets are suffering from huge economic uncertainties. In terms of growth, the global market has been topped by the United States, which has achieved a growth of 10.1% by selling 10.54 million automobiles. Germany is the next in line having recorded 8% growth by selling 2.93 million units, whereas India has achieved the third place among growing markets with a 7.8% growth, which it has achieved by selling 2.73 million units.
SIAM has stated that India as a market is rated significantly low in terms of vehicle penetration across the globe with only 10 cars per 1000 persons. This puts it way behind Germany and United States that have recorded 565 and 453 cars respectively per 1000 persons. As per estimates provided by a market research company called JD Power, it is shown that the auto market in India is going to triple within 2020 with an annual sale of 11 million cars.
As far as exports of its cars are concerned, India has exported only around one-tenth of cars that Germany (3.77 million units) has exported till October 2011. The most encouraging sign for the Indian auto industry is that it has been able to lower down the gap it had with China. If figures are considered till October 2011, it is going to be seen that China has exported only 7.03 Lakh units, though it produces 24% of the total global car production. In the same period, the exports of Indian cars have registered a growth of 17.45%, which numerically is approximately 4.9 Lakh units.
