Indian promise

摘要

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020 was expected to be a year of robust growth for the Indian construction equipment market, following the disruption of the 2019 general election. The Indian construction market always experiences disruption during a general election as there is a pause on the awarding of new government contracts during proceedings.In the event, the pandemic precipitated a 10% decline in sales, to 73,275 units of earthmoving, road building and lifting and handling construction equipment. This took demand back to where it was in 2017 and was some 25% lower than the peak year of 2018.As disappointing as this was for a market that was showing clear signs of returning to robust growth at the end of 2019,a 10% downturn as a result of the pandemic and lockdowns was not as bad an outcome as might have been expected. The backhoe loader, by far the most popular equipment type in India, saw only a 4% decline in sales last year. Losses were more pronounced among other equipment types, particularly crawler excavators and wheeled loaders, where the downturns in 2020 were of the order of 20% or higher.