April 7, 2002	Sunday	Muharram 23, 1423

KARACHI, April 6: Minister for commerce, industry and production Abdul Razak Dawood on Saturday said the government is not going to allow import of reconditioned cars as this will ruin the local industry which has just started to pick-up.

Addressing a press conference at PIDC headoffice, the minister said that the government’s objective is to increase existing capacity of car manufacturers so that consumers do not face shortage or have to wait for longer delivery period.

The minister said that three meetings, including one held on Saturday with car manufacturers have produced good results.

He said that car manufacturers have agreed to ensure delivery within a period of three months and in case of any delay the consumer will be paid interest for a period beyond three months.

Dawood said car manufacturers do not favour that a consumer should pay premium for getting early delivery of a vehicle and advised the general public not to pay such extra amount to dealers as there does not exist any such condition.

It is encouraging to witness, the minister said, that the financial institutions have started to lease consumers as well as durable goods in Pakistan, as is the practice the world over. A sudden increase in demand for cars, he said is indicative of the fact that buying power of consumers have also improved.

He hoped that the current shortage of cars would be over by July or September this year as the manufacturers have agreed to enhance their production during coming months.

Explaining the reason for a sudden shortfall in supply of cars the minister said that the Indus Motors, manufacturers of Toyota Corolla, after a long period of nine years changed their model which slowed down their manufacturing process.

Though it was a good decision on part of the Toyota car manufacturers the minister said but this created shortage of cars in the market because only 52 cars of new model could roll out from their facility in the month of February.

However, he said that more cars have now started to roll out from their facility and in the month of March they produced 350 cars and have assured to produce 396 in April, 600 in May, 1,600 cars in May/June and 800 units in July and around 900 onward.

Razak was optimistic about the performance of the automobile industry which he thinks have started to pick up and could easily cater the need of the domestic market.

Similarly, he said the manufacturers of Honda car have produced around 5,800 units last year and plans to roll-out around 8,000 units this year having a monthly average of 720 cars.

He further said that the producer of Suzuki brand cars, last year produced 5,000 units and intend to roll-out around 10,000 this year having 100 per cent higher production. They produced 1,000 cars in March, and expect to produce 1,100 units in April 1,150 in May and 1,200 in June.

Keeping all these facts under consideration the minister hoped that the shortage