Price hike by Maruti Suzuki and General Motors in India

Last month we mentioned that a price hike by most of Indian car makers was up the line. And the first two to kick off with the price hike in India are Maruti Suzuki and General Motors. Both manufacturers have cited the reason for the price hike as the higher input costs and the depreciating Indian rupee, which is making importing parts much more expensive than before due to the continual weakness showed by the Indian currency when compared to the US Dollar, the currency of choice in the import-export markets.

Maruti Suzuki have bumped the prices of all their models except for the Swift Dzire sedan which is set to be repositioned in a few weeks time after the launch of the new Swift Dzire compact sedan. The price hike varies from Rs. 2,400 to Rs. 17,300 with the increase in price per model being close to 3.4%.

General Motors have also hiked prices of all its models by 0.5 per cent and 1.75 per cent depending on the car model. This roughly translates to a price hike of Rs. 3,000 to Rs. 15,000, depending on the car model. GM India will also be rolling out facelifted versions of the Aveo U-VA, the Tavera MUV and the Captiva SUV soon, but that does not spare the three outgoing models from the hike in price.

Even though murmurs of an impending price hike had surfaced way back in December 2011, most automakers had refrained from the hike mainly due to their declining sales figures. A majority of automakers had come out with huge discounts resulting in an increase in sales with the sales figures for December 2011 turning up to be one of the strongest seen in recent times.