the company is now in the process of gradually ramping up its production to reduce waiting period for the citynew delhi japanese auto major honda expects sales to bounce back in india over the next few months on the back of enhanced product portfolio and resumption of operations at dealerships across the country according to a senior company officialthe auto maker which is present in the country through a whollyowned subsidiary also expects production across its two plants in india to touch precovid levels by the end of next month helping it reduce waiting time for its recently launched products especially the fifth generation city advt with festive season ahead of us we are hoping for a month on month improvement in sales volumes going forward and expect to start showing positive recovery on monthly volumes in second half of fiscal honda cars india ltd hcil senior vice president and director sales and marketing rajesh goel told pti in an interviewthe response to the recently launched models has been extremely positive and is helping the company create excitement in the market and improve buying sentiment he addedthe allnew city in particular has received a great response from the market both in terms of enquiries and contracts and has been able to stimulate the midsize sedan segment goel notedthe customers for city have always been very discerning and as per the initial response the top end zx variant with numerous segmentfirst features is getting the maximum demand of almost 60 per cent he addedin another trend more than half of the first month bookings are for cvt automatic variants as compared to 40 per cent in the fourth generation city goel saidbesides city the company recently introduced new wrv and bsvi compliant diesel trim of civic sedan it is now gearing up to drive in new version of jazzgoel said hcil was in the middle of bsvi transition when the national lockdown happened leading to a sharp fall in monthly sales advt ever since our production resumed in midjune our priority has been to quickly roll out the models goel saidhe added that the company is now in the process of gradually ramping up its production to reduce waiting period for the cityboth our plants in greater noida and tapukara are operational since midjune our production is currently at about 60 per cent of precovid levelwhen we resumed operations in midjune we had started at 25 per cent level this is being further ramped up and we hope to reach 100 per cent of precovid production level by end of september goel saidthe approach has been to target and achieve safe stable and efficient operations he addedthe plants started with limited capacity and lesser manpower to ensure strict adherence to the safety and distancing norms which are a must in the current prevailing scenario goel saidthe auto maker is also monitoring its dealers operational status on a daily basis as they continue to get impacted due to intermittent local lockdowns for