New Delhi: India’s largest four-wheeler manufacturer in terms of sales value – the Maruti Suzuki – will increase the prices of passenger cars and sports utility vehicles across the range from April, the car manufacturing giant has announced. Maruti Suzuki India, which is a subsidiary of Japanese automaker Suzuki Corporation, said in a regulatory filing that it will increase the prices across its entire range.
Maruti Suzuki produces some of the most popular car models in the country, including hatchbacks such as Maruti Suzuki WagonR, Celerio, Alto, Swift, and Baleno. The company also sells petrol and CNG variants of its basic sedan car Maruti Suzuki Dzire and premium sedan Ciaz. Maruti Suzuki also produces the seven-seater multi-utility vehicle Ertiga, five-seater Maruti Suzuki Brezza, and Echo among others.
In addition to passenger vehicles, the company also offers a range of CNG and Petrol and Diesel driven light commercial vehicles. Automakers such as India’s domestic car manufacturing giant Tata Motors, and Sport Utility Vehicle manufacturer Mahindra Group have also either increased their prices or planning to revises their prices soon.
Mahindra Group last month increased the prices of its XUV700 and Mahindra Thar premium SUVs by 50,000 to 60,000 across models. Mahindra Group has earlier increased the prices of its Scorpio SUVs. Car manufacturers have been increasing prices due to rising input costs, logistic costs, and supply-side disruptions such as shortage of semiconductors that badly affected auto manufacturing across several countries last year.
Also read: Maruti Suzuki India's pending orders rise to around 4.05 lakh units in Jan
Luxury auto manufacturers such as Germany’s Mercedes Benz and Audi Group have also announced their plans to increase the prices of their products due to increase in input cost. Maruti Suzuki said that it continued to experience rising input cost pressures owing to increasing regulatory compliance and rising prices.
While Mercedes-Benz said it absorbed the majority of input costs, it was forced to pass on a part of the increase in input costs to the customers. On the other hand, manufacturers such as Renault India have attributed the price rise to constant increases in input costs, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, inflation and cost rise due to regulatory obligations.
Several car manufacturers such as Tata Motors and Maruti Suzuki have increased their prices last year as well. Maruti Suzuki, which achieved a significant milestone of becoming the first carmaker in India to sell 25 million vehicles this year after 40 years of its launch, said that it was making an effort to reduce the costs and offset the increase partially. So it became imperative to pass on some impacts via price increase.
The Japanese carmaker also exports a large number of cars from its Indian plant and has recorded the export of its 2,50,000th car, a Baleno to Latin America this week. Maruti Suzuki commands over 40 percent market share in the passenger car market and it is the biggest manufacturer of small cars in the country. Any price increase by the market leader is expected to be followed by other car manufacturers as well.
