AutomobileFeature

Two Lakh Jobs lost in past 3 Months in automobile sector

New Delhi: Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA) claims that around 2 lakh jobs will be cut across Automobile Industry in last 3 months. “The majority of job cuts have happened in the last three months. It started around May and continued through June and July,” FADA president Ashish Harsharaj Kale.

With no immediate signs of recovery, FADA says that more jobs may have to be cut down because of constant shutting down of the Automobile Dealership centers. The main reason behind this is the cut down of sales in past three months.

According to Ashish Harsharaj, the two lakh jobs cuts in the last three months are over and above the 32,000 people who lost employment when 286 showrooms were closed across 271 cities in the 18-month period which ended in April this year.

Around 2.5 million people were employed directly through around 26,000 automobile showrooms operated by 15,000 dealers. Another 2.5 million are indirectly employed in the dealership ecosystem, Ashish added.

As per Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) figures, vehicle wholesale across all categories declined by 12.35% to 60,85,406 units in April-June against 69,42,742 units in same period of last year. Passenger vehicles (PV) segment has been the worst hit with sales continuing to decline for almost a year now. In July, market leader Maruti Suzuki reported a 36.3% drop in its domestic PV wholesales, while Hyundai saw a dip of 10%. M&M sales were down 16%, Tata Motors’ PV sales fell 31% while that of Honda Cars India Ltd (HCIL) also came down 48.67% during the month.