26 December 2004	Sunday	13 Ziqa'ad 1425

KARACHI, Dec 25: Pak Suzuki has planned to inject state of the art completely built up (CBU) vehicles in the first quarter of 2005 to plug the demand and supply gap followed by the local manufacturing of these vehicles from the year 2006 onwards.

This was informed by managing director of Pak Suzuki, Kenichi Ayukawa to the federal industries minister, Jehangir Khan Tarin in a meeting held in Islamabad on Friday.

He informed the minister that the company has doubled the production of vehicles in less than two years and has invested more than Rs two billion to further increase the production of more than 80,000 vehicles in 2005 through expansion of current plant capacity.

He said that currently five vendors are setting up their new plants to supply components to Pak Suzuki exclusively. The total investment of more than Rs500 million will create 400 additional jobs, says a press release of Pak Suzuki.

Jehangir Tarin, however, expressed his concern over long waiting period and high premiums in the local market. He reaffirmed that the government would extend all out support in removing the impediments through notification in relevant rules.