Asia

Home page

Asia

India carmaker Maruti increases its profit in domestic market

23 January 2010 18:40 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Ziya Agazade â€“ APA. India’s biggest carmaker Maruti Suzuki said Saturday its quarterly net profit more than tripled as it announced plans to increase capacity to maintain its dominance of the domestic market, APA reports citing AFP.

Maruti, majority owned by Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp, said net profit during the fiscal third quarter soared to 6.88 billion rupees (149 million dollars) from 2.14 billion rupees a year earlier.

Maruti, which sells about one in two cars in the country, said sales jumped 62.5 percent to 73.34 billion rupees.

Nearly four-fifths of cars in India are bought using loans.

Passenger car sales are forecast to reach two million this year and are expected to triple in the next decade, boosted by higher incomes in the country of 1.2 billion people, according to industry estimates.