India’s worst car sales data in years adds to slowdown pain

Bloomberg

Sales of cars and SUVs in India slumped the most since October 2011, adding to a slew of bad news that points to a slowdown in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.
Passenger vehicle sales in April fell 17.1 percent to 247,541 units from a year earlier, data released by the
Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) showed. Car sales slumped almost 20 percent, while overall automobile sales dropped 16 percent.
“The not-so-happy news continues,” Vishnu Mathur,
the director general of SIAM,
told reporters in New Delhi,
referring to a decline in discretionary purchases from fast-moving consumer goods to travel and tourism.
“The sentiment in the market is not very good.”
The slowdown isn’t limited to car sales. Air traffic in India, the world’s fastest-growing aviation market last year, expanded at the slowest pace in almost six years in March, while demand for bank loans grew at 13.2% in March from a year ago, slowing from the 14.5% pace seen in February, according to central bank data.
Hindustan Unilever Ltd, India’s largest maker of consumer staples, recently reported March quarter revenue growth of just 7%, the weakest in 18 months.