An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The con­tin­u­ous for­eign ex­change cri­sis is cre­at­ing a slow­down in the for­eign used and new car in­dus­try.

It is al­so forc­ing some deal­ers to down­size the num­ber of em­ploy­ees or even close shops.

Head of T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA), Visham Bab­wah told Busi­ness Guardian the prob­lem is that cars are in de­mand, but deal­ers can­not ac­cess the for­eign ex­change to buy them.

The Cen­tral Bank’s Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee (MPC) last Fri­day re­port­ed that car loans have dropped this year

The Cen­tral Bank’s eco­nom­ic da­ta pack record­ed re­cent new mo­tor ve­hi­cle sales:

* Quar­ter II 2023—2,863 units;

* Quar­ter III 2023—3,083 units;

* Quar­ter IV 2023—3,045 units;

* Quar­ter I 2024—3,328 units;

* Quar­ter II 2024—2,978 units

* Quar­ter III 2024—2,904 units;

* Quar­ter IV 2024—3,123 units; and

* Quar­ter I 2025­—2,691.

As it per­tains to pri­vate ve­hi­cles, in quar­ter two 2,010 ve­hi­cles were sold, quar­ter three 2023 1,981 quar­ter-four 2,008. In the first quar­ter of 2024, sales stood at 2,224, sec­ond quar­ter 1,907, third quar­ter 1,977, fourth quar­ter 2,137, and first quar­ter of 2025, 1,764.

Bab­wah ex­plained that the fluc­tu­a­tion in sales de­pends on the time of the year. He said that for Christ­mas and when new stu­dents are head­ing to uni­ver­si­ty or peo­ple start­ing a new job there would be an in­crease in pur­chas­ing.

“It fluc­tu­ates from time to time, but it hasn’t been that bad. I don’t know the amount of de­crease, but it fluc­tu­ates.”

The head of the as­so­ci­a­tion said he spoke to deal­ers re­cent­ly at their last meet­ing and they in­di­cat­ed that there was not much of a slow­down, but the prob­lem re­mains the forex chal­lenge.

“If a deal­er used to bring in 20 cars a month, they could on­ly bring in 10, due to the crunch. An­oth­er is­sue is the de­lay in ship­ment through the Pana­ma Canal. Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion al­so, you have de­lays. All these things are ham­per­ing and caus­ing the slow­down,” Bab­wah said.

On how the in­dus­try is try­ing to stay afloat, he not­ed that the method of sur­viv­ing is pur­chas­ing oth­er cur­ren­cies from the bank, as some­times a busi­ness own­er does not get the US dol­lar, they have to pur­chase oth­er cur­ren­cies.

“You can­not go be­yond $6.79, to pur­chase a US dol­lar from any fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, so if the bank should get their hands on US dol­lars, they could pur­chase an­oth­er cur­ren­cy, cross-cur­ren­cy, eu­ro, pound, Cana­di­an, what­ev­er and they could sell it to you and they could put what­ev­er markup they feel. Then you have oth­er means where deal­ers get their US to pur­chase their cars that are com­ing in.  Some­times, clients would pay for their car US. dol­lars and things like that. So we have an arrange­ment that is be­ing made and that’s how we are sur­viv­ing, but the bank doesn’t give you the amount of forex that you re­quire,” Bab­wah dis­closed.

He high­light­ed that used cars can cost be­tween US$10, 000 to US$12,000, while a new car could cost in the range of US$25,000 to US$50,000, de­pend­ing on the make and mod­el.  

Asked if these is­sues are caus­ing deal­ers to cut their staff, he re­spond­ed yes and said if there were 15 em­ploy­ees, it would de­crease by 12.

“Some deal­ers have in­di­cat­ed that this is tem­po­rary, while oth­ers have closed down, as they are un­able to deal with the forex is­sue and main­tain over­head ex­pens­es.”

An­oth­er fac­tor is crime, Bab­wah said “I had two deal­ers call me and they said they had to leave the coun­try be­cause they were get­ting calls for ex­tor­tion.”

“Last year, we had two guys who were kid­napped and things like that. Peo­ple liv­ing in fear. I still have peo­ple call­ing me and say­ing they are see­ing peo­ple around their premis­es that are known crim­i­nal el­e­ments,” he lament­ed.

Meet­ing with Trade Min­is­ter  

Bab­wah said the as­so­ci­a­tion met with the Trade, In­vest­ment, and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj last month to dis­cuss some of the things af­fect­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

While he said the meet­ing last­ed 20 min­utes, there were some pos­i­tive re­spons­es.

“I hope that the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to meet peo­ple and to re­al­ly take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion what the sec­tor is say­ing and to work to­geth­er with them and not just make de­ci­sions based on what it feels. Be­cause, you see, peo­ple could say things on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form and not be guid­ed in the right di­rec­tion as to how to deal with the par­tic­u­lar sec­tor.”

Drop in au­to sales in­ter­na­tion­al­ly

On Tues­day, CN­BC re­port­ed that ve­hi­cle sales in June 2025 showed a mixed trend, with lead­ing car­mak­ers like Maru­ti Suzu­ki and Hyundai see­ing a dou­ble-dig­it drop in dis­patch­es to deal­ers, while oth­ers like Mahin­dra & Mahin­dra, Toy­ota, and JSW MG Mo­tor re­port­ed growth. Two-wheel­er sales were al­so large­ly pos­i­tive.

Maru­ti Suzu­ki, the coun­try’s largest car­mak­er, saw a 13 per cent drop in do­mes­tic pas­sen­ger ve­hi­cle dis­patch­es, de­liv­er­ing 1,18,906 units com­pared to 1,37,160 units last year. Its mi­ni-seg­ment cars, Al­to and S-Pres­so, fell to 6,414 units from 9,395, while com­pact cars like Baleno, Cele­rio, Dzire, Ig­nis, Swift, and Wag­onR dropped to 54,177 units from 64,049.

Hyundai Mo­tor In­dia re­port­ed a 12 per cent de­cline in do­mes­tic dis­patch­es, with 44,024 units com­pared to 50,103 units last year. Tarun Garg, HMIL’s Whole-time Di­rec­tor and Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer, cit­ed geopo­lit­i­cal chal­lenges af­fect­ing mar­ket sen­ti­ment but ex­pressed cau­tious op­ti­mism for a de­mand re­cov­ery, sup­port­ed by po­ten­tial re­po rate re­duc­tions and im­proved liq­uid­i­ty.

Toy­ota Kir­loskar Mo­tor re­port­ed a five per cent sales in­crease, dis­patch­ing 28,869 units com­pared to 27,474 units in June 2024. JSW MG Mo­tor In­dia saw a 21% growth, sell­ing 5,829 units.

CN­BC fur­ther re­port­ed that in the two-wheel­er seg­ment, TVS Mo­tor Com­pa­ny record­ed a 10 per cent rise in do­mes­tic sales to 2,81,012 units, while Roy­al En­field’s do­mes­tic sales grew 16 per cent to 76,957 units from 66,117 units.

Ba­jaj Au­to, how­ev­er, re­port­ed a 13 per cent de­cline in to­tal do­mes­tic sales, in­clud­ing com­mer­cial ve­hi­cles, with 1,88,460 units com­pared to 2,16,451 units last year.