Mumbai, Jan 1 (IANS): Automobile major Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) on Tuesday reported a meagre 1 per cent rise in its total vehicle sales for December 2018, owing to tight liquidity and low buying sentiment in the domestic market.

The total sales of the company stood at 39,755 units last month, against 39,200 units sold during the corresponding period of 2017.

The medium to heavy commercial vehicle was the major drag as it declined by 31 per cent, while on the commercial vehicles segment, the company sold 16,906 units, logging a decline of 4 per cent.

"...in domestic market, challenges relating to tight liquidity and low buying sentiment continued the de-growth in December," said Rajan Wadhera, President, Automotive Sector, M&M.

However, the export zoomed by 38 per cent to 3,065 vehicles from last month.

"We are happy to have ended the first nine months of the year on a positive growth of 13 per cent, and are particularly buoyed by our ongoing strong performance in exports."

He said that the company hopes to see a good performance in Q4, owing to the anticipated rural demand because of the harvesting season and the proposed launch of our new XUV300 in February 2019.

"The company's domestic sales touched 36,690 vehicles during December 2018, as against 36,979 vehicles in December 2017," M&M said in a statement.

In the passenger vehicles segment, M&M sold 15,091 vehicles in December 2019, as against 15,543 vehicles in the corresponding month last year.

Following the sales report, M&M's stocks fell out of favour among investors. It ended 3.75 per cent lower, declining the most among 30-stocks on BSE Sensex.