New Delhi, Oct 4 (IANS) Britain has emerged as India's largest automobile export market where the Indian auto industry sold passenger vehicles worth $481 million in 2009-10, a leading industry lobby said Monday.

"Our automobile exports to UK have grown by over 8 times in the last 4 years from $52 million in 2006-07 to $481 million in 2009-10," said the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Italy is the second largest export market with $433.77 million, followed by Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa at $233.22 million, $217.51 million and $209.95 million in 2009-10 respectively.

According to FICCI, passenger vehicles constituted the major portion of total automobile exports of India.

"Around 76 percent of India's automobile exports are that of passenger vehicle. The second important category of our automobile exports is two wheelers."

It added that the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of both the passenger vehicle and the two wheeler exports has been 31 percent and 24 percent for the last five years.

"The share of commercial vehicle and tractors has been falling for the last five years in India's automobile exports."

According to it, Singapore has emerged as the top most destination for India's commercial vehicle exports, whereas United States remains the largest tractor export market, with Nepal emerging as an important market for this segment.

"USA is still the single largest export destination for India's tractors despite our exports of tractors to USA falling from $129 million to $109 million during 2006-09."

Currently, the industry exports $4.5 billion worth of automobiles and has one percent share in the global automobile export market in 2009 and was ranked 22nd globally.