The Toyota plant at Bidadi in Karnataka, which manufactures the Innova Crysta and the Fortuner, is operating at 90 per cent capacity compared with around 100 per cent utilisation last year.

The second plant in Bangalore is operating at 50-55 per cent capacity, N. Raja, deputy managing director (sales and service) at Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private Limited (TKMPL), told The Telegraph over phone.

The company has stopped operations for four days in August, including weekends, said Raja. In September, he feels “production cuts will not be required because there are a number of holidays”, while in October “there should be normal production”.

“We have had no layoffs, our manpower is intact,” the sales head added.

Raja expects the slowdown in the sector to start turning around from September. “We experienced the worst in July with a 29 per cent deceleration. In August, I expect the drop in sales to be less than 20 per cent,” he said.

Terming the slowdown both cyclical as well as structural, Raja said: “Cyclical slowdown happens once in five years. The structural issues started happening in the middle of 2018 with the IL&FS crisis, which led to restricted borrowings that affected fund flow and whatever got released was at a higher rate.”

“Along with this was the NBFC funds crunch. This affected the sales in the smaller cities the most where customers don’t have credit ratings,” he added.