New Delhi: The sale of petrol and diesel vehicles in the country, a key indicator of the state of the country’s economy, is still below the sale of these vehicles in the country during the pre-pandemic year, showed the latest official data.
Though most of the sectors of the economy have surpassed their performance during the pre-pandemic year, the financial year 2019-20 when the Covid-19 global pandemic had not hit the world but the sale of vehicles, both petrol and diesel-operated vehicles, is yet to surpass the sale recorded during the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
According to the latest official data shared by the government in the Parliament, in the last five years, the highest number of diesel vehicles sold in the country was in 2018 when 29,66,762 diesel vehicles were sold.
While 26,84,145 diesel vehicles were sold in the country in 2017, the number went up to Rs 29,66,762 diesel vehicles in 2018 before the decline in sales to 27,12,946 diesel vehicles in 2019, just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world.
As a result, the sale of diesel vehicles in the country declined to just 18,80,518 diesel vehicles, and 8,32,428 vehicles, a decline of nearly one-third. This is the period when the entire country was in complete nationwide lockdown for three months and partial lockdown for another three months before the gradual opening that started from October 2020 onwards.
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The true nature of the adverse economic impact caused by the pandemic can also be assessed from the fact that the sale of diesel vehicles in the country was less in 2021 in comparison with the sale of diesel vehicles in 2020, the first Covid year. It showed the adverse economic impact caused by the second Covid wave triggered by the highly deadly Delta variant of Covid virus that killed the maximum number of people in the country during April-May-June 2021.
The official data showed that more than 20.9 lakh diesel vehicles have been sold in the country till December 14, which is a marginal improvement over the diesel vehicles sold in the country during Covid years but still down by more than 6.22 lakh vehicles, a decline of 23% in comparison with their sale in 2019.
If one looks at the sale of diesel and mixed-fuel vehicles in the country, 30,22,786 diesel-hybrid vehicles were sold in 2018, declining to 27,49,412 in 2019, and further decline to just 18,83,096 and 18,77,479 diesel-hybrid vehicles in 2020 and 2021 respectively. Before marginally improving in 2022 to 20,91,224 such vehicles till December 14.
Similarly, the sale of petrol and mixed fuel vehicle was over 1.91 crore vehicles in 2017, increasing to over 2.08 crore vehicles in 2018 and then declining marginally to over 1.98 crore petrol vehicles in the pre-pandemic year of 2019 when the Covid-19 pandemic had not hit the world.
However, after Covid hit the world, the sale of petrol and petrol-hybrid vehicles declined to 1.54 crore vehicles in 2020 and remained almost at the same level in 2021 as well before marginally improving to over 1.65 crore vehicles this year (till December 14), a decline of nearly 17 per cent in comparison with the sale of such vehicles in 2019.
