The latter half of 2020 has seen upraise in sale of PVs

Banwari Lal Sharma, CEO, CarWale & BikeWale

"Although the pandemic has caused ripples across industries, it has turned out to be an ill wind for the automotive industry to some extent. With increased focus on personal mobility, sales of PVs have considerably seen an uptake towards the later half of 2020. Also, the lockdown has compelled auto players to realize the significance of digital transformation for the sake of customer convenience, process automation, easy operations and a truncated car buying and selling journey.

However, while we continue to march forward, we expect Union Budget 2021 to address some fundamental issues that the industry has been dealing with. Firstly, GST rates to be lowered to 18% to boost demand across all segments of PVs and CVs in India and to assuage the burden of taxation on first-time buyers. Focus on augmenting the financing framework for implementing 'soft approvals' on loans for car buyers, on par with consumer durable loans will go a long way in boosting demand. Also, introduction of vehicle scrappage policy is the need of the hour. Although this may take some time to culminate, in the interim, the government can announce incentives for self scrapping of End of Life vehicles that are in contradiction with the emission requirements. Recycling parts of these scrapped vehicles will also allow domestic manufacturers to cater to the widening demand-supply gap.

We believe that it is important for both the industry and government to work hand in hand with each other to steer this revolution and are positive that the upcoming Budget will lay equal emphasis on infrastructure development, digital adoption and strengthening stakeholder sentiments."