KARACHI, Oct 8: Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar assured car assemblers on Wednesday that the government had “no intention of pulling rug from under your feet” but urged them to “police your dealers” while referring to reports of premium being charged on delivery of booked orders of car.

He urged car assemblers to address the issue of speculative booking of cars for getting premium on re-sale, but refused to accept the suggestion that delivered car should be made non-transferable for at least six months to curb speculative trading.

A meeting of the Pakistan-Japan Business Forum on Wednesday, where the commerce minister was the chief guest, did discuss the bilateral trade issue of Pakistan and Japan but mainly focussed on controversial car business as a business leader informed the forum that Japan had invested $100 million in car assembling in Pakistan and now about 8,000 units were rolling out every month from the assembly plants.

The thrust was that Japanese investment in car industry needs as much government protection as is sovereign guarantee has been given to a multinational chemical company in Pakistan.

“From 40,000 units a year in 2001, assemblers increased the output number to 42,000 units in 2002 and pushed it up by 50 per cent to 63,000 units in 2003 and are now all poised to bring out 100,000 new cars before the end of this fiscal year,” the business leader said.

He repeated the message of auto assemblers given in press advertisements that it involves employment of 120,000, which is likely to increased to 200,000 in vending units and that the entire industry pays Rs30 billion tax to the government, provides import substitution of $750 million a year and gives a saving of $500 million.

Mr Humayun informed the forum that the extended deletion policy programme was coming to an end by next December and the government was now looking for “a logical solution of the problem”.

Sohail Ahmad representing a vending unit too took up the case for protection and promotion of the car industry in Pakistan where only 5.5 vehicles are owned by 1,000 persons as compared to 200 cars in 1,000 persons in Malaysia.

He complained that 82 per cent of auto parts market amounting to Rs24 billion is dominated by smuggled and fake parts in the country.

“For an investment of Rs1 billion on a car assembly plant, the vendors have to invest Rs8 billion,” he argued while trying to convince that a blow on car assembling industry will hurt the vendors.

A senior Japanese executive said that it was wrong to say that Japanese investors were obstructing car exports. He informed the forum that his company in Pakistan make a modest export of 100 units to Bangladesh.

Discussing Pakistan-Japan trade, the minister said that historically Pakistan had been supplier of yarn, which was now missing. Probably, because of this exports from Pakistan to Japan has come down considerably.

“Japan is a difficult market and our exporters are comfortable with only easy markets,” he remarked while urging the businessmen to “put your heads together” and offer some practical options to the government to initiate dialogue with Japan on trade improvement.

Mr Humayun said that during his meeting with JETRO he had asked for making a feasibility of the proposed ‘textile city’in Karachi and also arranging power generation and supply.

Earlier Pakistan-Japan Business Forum president Farrukh Sheikh in his address of welcome proposed that a visit of Pakistan delegation under the leadership of commerce minister to Tokyo for a business dialogue with Japanese businessmen was overdue.