Passenger car sales grow 34 percent, highest in two years

Manufacturers sold 132,615 cars this October, compared to 99,052 units in October 2008, a rise of 33.8 percent, according to monthly figures provided by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).

Overall sales in the passenger segment including utility and multipurpose vehicles rose 16.2 percent. Multipurpose vehicles sales increased 24.06 percent.

Sales of trucks and buses rose 52 percent to 42,562 units.

In the seven month period starting April, passenger car sales have grown to 1,257,123 units, a rise of 14.33 percent over the like period of previous fiscal.

But April-October 2009 has seen sales of medium and heavy commercial vehicles fall 19.02 percent, while those for light commercial vehicles have slipped 3.7 percent.

At the recently concluded India Economic Summit, Carlos Ghosn, head of the alliance between Japan's Nissan Motors and France's Renault SA, had said that the Indian passenger car market would triple from the current two million units to six million units in the next 10 years.