At the 58th ACMA annual convention Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Road Transport and Highways urged the auto industry to push for exports from the country thus bringing into focus the Make-in-India model yet again. In the first quarter of FY 2018-19, the overall demand of automobiles grew by 18 percent in domestic market whereas the exports demand went up by 26 percent. The exports of automobiles have been growing up an the segment saw a total exports of 167,161 units in the quarter as against 118,420 units in April-June period of FY 2017-18. While this showed a growth of 26 per cent, exports for the passenger vehicle business has seen a growth of 41 per cent in the first quarter of 2018-19.
Hyundai has been leading the pack in terms of exports followed by Ford and then Maruti Suzuki. In fact even Mahindra is getting into the groove and stands in 8th place as far as exports from the country are concerned. Tata Motors, sadly, does not find its name on the list even though FCA makes it to the 10th spot and that's thanks to the Jeep Compass.
Nitin Gadkari said, "We're glad that there is so much research happening in the country and it's also good to see a roadmap in place. But more needs to be done. My expectations from this industry are more. GDP is growing but we are worried about the dollar vs rupee rate as also the growing imports. We must increase exports to counter this. The infrastructure is being developed and road length of the national highways has been increased from 96,000 km to 2,00,000 km"
