KARACHI, March 18: Car assemblers have assured the government of matching demand with the production in the next fiscal year when they expect to bring out 135,000 units to meet almost the same demand.

The demand for cars in the current fiscal has been given at 115,000 as against a production of 95,000 showing an excess of 20,000 cars in demand. During 2004-05, the car assemblers expect addition of Ghandara to join the existing four assemblers with a production capacity of 10,000 cars.

In their follow up representation made to Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz this week after they had a lengthy meeting session with last week, the Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers' Association (PAMA) has claimed bringing down waiting period for delivery of booked cars to two to eight months.

"The waiting period for cars now generally in the range of two to eight months would keep falling until it vanishes or is reduced from months to weeks in the course of next financial year," Kunwar Idrees, the Chairman of PAMA and a retired bureaucrat informed Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz in his letter.

The PAMA has given a commitment of ensuring to book only one car against one national identity card to keep out the speculators from car purchase business. It wants the provincial governments to register new cars only in the name of original buyers and allow transfer within six months on payment of a deterrent fees.

According to their production programme, the car assemblers are confident of boosting production to 160,000 units in 2003-06, which would be more than expected demand of 155,000. They want to maintain an edge in production during 06-07 when it would be 180,000 against a demand of 170,000. Production will be raised to 200,000 units in 2007-08 as against a demand of 190,000.

"The car companies have planned to invest Rs8 billion to expand the capacity of their plants to achieve the production targets," the PAMA has assured while indicating that the vendors shall have to make their own investments to keep pace.

Kunwar Idrees quoted and endorsed the observation of the Secretaries Task Force which found prices of Pakistan assembled cars competitive with India but only after excluding taxes and currency disparities.

"No increase in car prices have been made in the past three years," PAMA claimed and pointing out that prices of Honda and Suzuki were reduced somewhat a year ago.

"Any decision like the import of used cars, even if it is one time and limited," the PAMA said would upset the car production growth "and should make the economic managers of the country more unhappy than the car producers."

The PAMA leader contended that the pressure to import used cars is from "a few thousand moneyed people who are too impatient to wait for a few months to get their new cars," and has advised the finance minister to resist it.