Maruti Suzuki India has predicted that production will continue to decline in the first quarter due to lack of electronic components. However, the company expects some relief between July and September, a senior company official told PTI. The country’s largest carmaker has been facing semiconductor shortages for some time, which has affected their supply to meet market demand.
Last fiscal year, the company lost production of 1.7 thousand units. Shashank Srivastava, Senior Managing Director (Sales and Marketing) of Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) said: “Our loss in the third quarter of the last financial year was around 45,000 units. Similarly, we lost about 38,000 units in Q4”.
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When demand exceeded supply, the company’s order book reached more than four thousand units with Ertiga leading the pack with the maximum number of pending orders i.e. almost a thousand preorders. Order Bank of Breza SUVs have a backlog of 60,000 units. While the newly launched Fronx and the upcoming Jimny have had pre-orders in excess of 30,000 pieces each.
Srivastava further noted that due to the current supply situation, the company suffered a loss in production in April and predicts the same situation will repeat in May and June. “May loss and expected loss. We also have a loss in June. It will be a loss this quarter,” he said, adding, “So maybe we will have some improvement next time from July onwards.”
Last month, the company produced 1,44,097 passenger vehicles, down 6% from 1,52,954 units sold in the same month last year. The company said the shortage of electronic components has had some impact on vehicle production. In 2022-23, the automaker produced a record 19,220,000 units, however, it failed to meet its goal of bringing total production to 200,000 units in the last financial year.
First published date: May 28, 2023, 18:30 p.m. IST
