Festive cheer: Goa’s auto sales surge in Oct, 11K registered

PANAJI 
Amid the gloom here and across the country there’s a silver lining in Goa’s October auto sales numbers at the Regional Transport Office (RTO) at all its centres have collectively registered over 11,500 new vehicles in the festive month.

Records show, that 11,541 new vehicles were registered at the various RTO offices in the State in the 35 days between October 1 and November 4 this year.

Of these, 7,571 were two-wheelers and 2,596 were four-wheelers. The rest were three-wheelers and larger heavy vehicles.

Prior to October, monthly figures of vehicle registrations at RTO offices in Goa averaged between 6,000 and 7,000 in all the nine months from January to September this year.

Last year, Diwali was in November and vehicle sales numbers had also shot up in that month but not by the quantum it has increased this year.

In November 2023, the RTO offices had registered 9,125 new vehicles – 5,802 two-wheelers and 1,977 four-wheelers.

While the increase in sales is good news for the many auto dealerships in Goa, the gloom in the industry here like elsewhere across the country still persists.

“Sales have increased for sure due to Diwali this year. But the quantum of increase is not good enough or to an extent which will ease the problem of inventory piling up with auto dealerships in Goa,” said Prashant Joshi, who owns the Hyundai dealership at Verna.

Joshi who also heads the association of auto dealers in Goa said, the extent to which auto makers have increased their output and supply going robust, dealers are hard pressed to manage the ideal equilibrium between sales and inventory sizes.

“But the sales were indeed good in the last month. It was expected because of the back-to-back festivities – Chaturthi, Dussehra and now Diwali. We are also hoping that momentum will pick up in December during the festival season,” Joshi added.

High inventories due to a passenger vehicles sales slowdown has been a nationwide issue for auto dealerships and the national association had last month claimed that the net pile up of inventories had touched 7 lakh units collectively worth Rs 73,000 crore across the nation.

The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) had said the situation is “risky” and had cautioned auto and original parts makers to be vigilant of dealer failures due to the high inventory urging them to realign their production targets.