Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM), the manufacturer of the India's favourite Innova, is the latest carmaker to announce a price cut in India, to woo the auto lovers' in the country. The price cut comes in the wake of the latest excise duty reduction announced in the interim budget 2014-15.
Finance minister P Chidambaram, while presenting the budget, had said that the excise duty of cars, motorcycles, scooters and commercial vehicles in India has been cut down to 8 percent from 12, and the excise duty of Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) has gone down to 24 percent from 30.
The cut brings down the prices of Toyota's models including the popular Fortuner, Innova and Land Cruiser. The Etios Liva petrol hatchback, which was earlier priced in the range of ₹4.53 to ₹5.03 lakh, is now available for ₹4.44 lakh to ₹4.89 lakh. Fortuner prices have been slashed by up to ₹62,000 as the base variant of Fortuner two-wheel drive manual is now available for ₹21.81 lakh, while the automatic variant is priced at ₹22.79 lakh.
Innova now costs ₹9.47 lakh as against the previous ₹9.89. The Camry petrol variant is marketed at a price pint of ₹25.09 lakh after the price cut, while the Camry hybrid is priced at ₹29.13 lakh.
Carmakers like Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki, Mahindra & Mahindra, Ford, Volkswagen and Hyundai have also announced price cuts across all models.
Toyota sold 11,284 units in February, compared to the 13,979 units sold in the same period last year. The export of Etios series stood at 1,184 units last month.
"The recent excise duty cut was a welcome step taken by the government to revive car sale. However, other factors like high interest rate, falling rupee and unstable fuel pricing still loom large in the market," said N Raja, senior VP, Sales and Marketing according to TOI.
