Maruti eyes 10% jump in sales

Maruti Suzuki India, is expecting its sales to grow by over 10 per cent during the current fiscal on the back of last year's low-base and is planning to upgrade all its models to Bharat Stage-IV emission norms compliant by March 2010.

"I think, we should reach 8 lakh units sales in this fiscal and that is our target. This will be a growth of over 10 per cent compared with last fiscal," Shinzo Nakanishi, managing director and CEO said. The company had sold over 7.22 lakh vehicles in the domestic market in 2008-09.

In 2009 fiscal, the industry went through a demand slump in the second half after global economic meltdown and as such the base for comparison is very low, Nakanishi said.

"...but we are expecting good growth in the upcoming festive season...we will ramp up production in the next few months," he said without giving details.

According to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), MSI has sold 2,64,936 units in the domestic market during the April-July period of this year, a jump of 13.70 per cent over the year-ago period.

On exports, Nakanishi said the company would cross one-lakh mark in overseas sales.

"Probably we will end up selling about 1.1 lakh cars in the overseas markets," he said, adding in the last fiscal it had shipped just over 70,000 passenger vehicles from India.