New Delhi: India’s biggest automaker, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, expects sales of its cars in September to be higher than the previous month, its Chairman R C Bhargava told Reuters on Monday.

August domestic sales at Maruti Suzuki fell 34.3 per cent, one of the biggest monthly drops in sales in recent times. Indian auto sales fell for the 10th straight month in August, marking one of the worst slowdowns in the industry’s history.

Suzuki Motor Corp has asked Maruti Suzuki India to cut down discretionary expenses and plug in resource wastage at its plants in Gurgaon and Manesar to keep costs in control. The advisory from Suzuki, which is the 56% owner of Maruti, comes at a time when vehicle sales have plummeted to a two-decade low and Maruti has had to let go of some 3,000 of its contractual workers as it has pruned its production.

Maruti Suzuki will examine the possibility of having a captive finance company, which will help in reducing dependence of its customers and dealers on banks and NBFCs, which have been cautious in lending following a year-long slump in vehicle demand.

Shashank Srivastava, executive director, sales and marketing at Maruti Suzuki, said globally manufacturers have captive finance companies which are successful. “We will examine the option and look at India-specific requirements,” Srivastava told FE.

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, hit by a severe slowdown in demand for automobiles, has decided to keep its two plants in Haryana shut on 7th and 9th September. The company, in a notice to the stock exchanges today, said the two days will be counted as ‘no production days’.

Maruti Suzuki India, India’s top carmaker, has reduced its production by 33.99% in August, making it the seventh straight month that the country’s largest car maker reduced its output.

The company produced a total of 1,11,370 units in August as against 1,68,725 units in the year-ago month, it informed the BSE on Monday.

Maruti Suzuki has not renewed the contracts of 3,000 temporary employees across its manufacturing plants, chairman RC Bhargava said on Tuesday, as the company has been cutting production since February this year to control inventory pile-up amid a slowdown in demand.

Bhargava said over the past year, multiple factors led to an increase in final cost of cars, affecting their affordability.

With the government having rolled out measures to facilitate an additional `5 lakh crore of bank loans and pushing back the timeline for the one-time registration fee, RC Bhargava believes the auto industry can now look forward to a different environment. Till last Thursday, the chairman of Maruti Suzuki had been reluctant to call an upturn in the festive season but now he believes the environment could change.

Maruti Suzuki will recall 40,618 units of its small car WagonR to rectify a possible issue of fuel hose fouling with metal clamp, reflecting yet another instance of growing recalls over the last few years. The recall campaign is for the vehicles fitted with 1-litre engine and manufactured between November 15, 2018 and August 12, 2019.

To arrest the fall in demand for diesel cars, Maruti Suzuki has announced it will offer free warranty for five years or 1 lakh km to customers across the country on models such as Dzire, Swift, Vitara Brezza and S-Cross. The development comes after sales of Maruti’s diesel engine fell after the announcement made by the company to stop manufacturing these vehicles from April 1, 2020, when the BS-VI emission norms will come into effect.

Over 3,000 temporary employees have lost jobs with the country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) due to the ongoing slump in the automobile industry, a top company executive has said.

MSI Chairman R C Bhargava said contracts of the temporary workers were not renewed due to the slowdown while asserting that permanent workers have not been impacted.

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