KARACHI, March 7: Commerce Minister Abdul Razak Dawood has hinted at opening import of second hand cars if local assemblers fail to ensure proper supplies to the market to meet the rising demand.

“I have been facing a lot of pressure to liberalize import of cars,” he said in a launching ceremony of Zabardast Truck, introduced by Adam Motor Company in collaboration with China.

He said the delivery time of new cars had once again gone up owing to surging demand of cars.

“If this situation purists for a long time, pressure will increase on us to open import of second hand CBU cars,” he said.

Sounding like a warning to the local assemblers, Razak urged the local industry to gear up its efforts in increasing the production so that the rising demand of cars could be met. He said that cars were now being sold on premium due to shortage in the market.

The government had imposed a ban on import of used cars in February 1994. Second hand car dealers have been putting pressures on the successive governments to open import of used cars so that customers could get cheaper cars as compared to costly locally assembled cars.

On other issues, he said the Engineering Vision was coming out next month, which would provide a roadmap to the local engineering industry specially the auto industry. “The vision was not fully approved yet as we intend to take the draft of the vision to the President shortly for approval,” he added.

On indeginization, he said the government would not allow any assembler to roll back its deletion programme. Every assembler should now focus on its deletion programme to complete it within the given time frame.

Talking about export of auto parts and vehicles, he said it was good to hear that Zabardast vehicle would soon be exported to Bangladesh.

Mr Razak said next week he was going to Japan to seek further technology transfer in the auto parts and engineering industry.

“Pakistan has been exporting auto parts to Europe and America for the last few years. Now I can say that quality of our parts are far better than other countries,” he said.

The minister said Pakistan exported auto parts worth $23 million last year and the government had fixed the target of $35 million for the current year and hopefully the exporters would surpass up to $40 million.

Earlier, Chief Executive Officer, Adam Motor Company, Feroz Khan, said the vehicle would be built at Sindh Engineering Plant with an initial deletion level of 40 per cent, which was ahead of government’s target by two per cent.

The price of the vehicle — 1.5 tons six wheeler — is fixed at Rs485,000.