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New Delhi, May 23 (IANS) The All India Transporters Welfare Association (AITWA), a body representing over 9 million road transport service providers of India has put out an advisory for its members not to buy any new trucks for the entire financial year 2020-21.

In a letter addressed to the members of the road transport fraternity, the transporters body said: "As our sector is going through financial turmoil during the ongoing pandemic, we are constrained to adopt measures to safeguard our businesses and trade in general."

AITWA rued the lack of stimulus and decided to become self reliant. "Till now there is no stimulus from the Government of India to support our industry. We need to be self-reliant as suggested by our Prime Minister," AITWA wrote in the letter.

AITWA has given an advisory to its members of the road transport sector is to consciously decide not to purchase any new trucks atleast for full year of 20-21. This will help in utilizing the trucks which are already on the roads, mostly owned by single truck owners.

"We strongly feel for our trade to survive, the fresh supply of trucks needs to be stalled. Unless we help ourselves, we cant expect anyone to help us. Our mantra for self reliance will be #NoTruckForMe," AITWA said.

"We are sure each one of us will agree to this and take necessary steps to ensure we do not get lured by deals from financial institutions or commercial vehicle manufacturers as there is still lot of uncertainty on movement picking up too," the body said.

"There are over 90 lakh trucks which are operating across India. Most of them have not been used in the last approximately 2 months due to various reasons. This is a direct loss for all of them," the transport body said.

They have paid or will have to pay road tax, insurance, permit fees etc for the whole year but will have lesser months to operate.

AITWA said that it is feared that once some kind of normalcy prevails, the excess capacity of all vehicles will become too high due to demand contraction of exports, production and trade.

Such a call by the truck owners will have implications for NBFCs, government revenues and OEM manufacturers.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be contacted at sanjeev.s@ians.in)