Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises statement  however, said the automobile industry witnessed a crisis recently due to the global downturn, which was triggered in September 2008 after the collapse of financial services major Lehman Brothers.

Following this, the government had annouced a string of stimulus measures including cut in excise duty to cushion the domestic economy from the impact of the global fiancial crisis.
“As a result, the automobile sector posted positive results with all the segments posting good growth figures, barring medium and heavy commercial vehicles, goods carrier category and three-wheeler goods carrier category,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, the domestic sales of passenger vehicles increased by 21.21 per cent during April-November over the year ago period, it added.

It also said Central public sector units under the Department of Heavy Industries stood at Rs 33,335.74 crore during January-November 2009 as against Rs 28,260.65 crore in the year ago period, a jump of 17.96 per cent. The ministry further said the state-owned BHEL’s thermal power generating sets achieved record generation of 403.43 billion units of during 2008-09 as against 387.71 billion units in the previous year.
This amounted to 79 per cent of the total power generated in the country from coal-based thermal sets, it said.

BHEL also got four major contracts from NTPC, NLC Tamil Nadu Power and MahaGenco cumulatively valued at around Rs 7,000 crore for the supply and installation of main plant equipment for thermal power project with a cumulative capacity of 3,250 MW.