KARACHI, July 30: Indus Motor Company (IMC) is introducing partial payment scheme on all of its Toyota variants from July 31.

Talking about terms and conditions for partial payments, Parvez Ghias, CEO IMC told a press conference on Monday that this option is available to individuals as well as corporate bodies with which the customer may make an initial payment of Rs250,000 for Corolla, Rs500,000 for Hilux and Rs10,00,000 for imported CBU vehicles through a pay order/demand draft in the name of IMC at the time of applying for booking of a vehicle.

He said that this scheme was provided as per desire of the government and Industry Ministry that auto industry should improve the payment system. Earlier, the assembler used to take full payment from the customers at the time of vehicle booking.

This scheme, he added, will be useful in case the car delivery period exceeds over one month. The company is also striving towards minimising delivery period of vehicles.

To minimise the abuse of this facility, in one year, from the date of booking, the customer may make only one application for booking of a vehicle through availing themselves of partial payment scheme, that is, multiple application booking in this scheme is not permitted, and every buyer will have to submit NIC and NTN numbers, he added.

He said that the month of July had remained worst in the IMC’s history in view of all time low orders owing to buyers’ interest towards used cars whose imports were thriving.

In view of sinking sale, the company will produce 1,000 less cars and LCV in July as compared to 4,500 per month. However, he ruled out the possibility of giving any price discount on cars to the buyers when sales were down. “We have closed the production for at least 10 days in the current month,” Parvez said adding delivery period has already been shortened as the dealers have sizable number of unsold stocks.

On introducing new 800cc cars, in replacement of Daihatsu Cuore, the production of which was stopped from May 2012, he told that there had been talks with Daihatsu Company, however, as the costs are very high it is not feasible to bring a new model of a small car at this time.

On Euro II, he said that the government has convened a meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday to discuss the possibility of Euro II compliant diesel and prospects of Euro II diesel version cars. Refineries were under pressure as the Environment Minister was upset as the government had earlier asked the refineries to produce Euro II diesel from July 1, 2012.

However, he said that Euro II compliant diesel will take more than two years as refineries will have to make huge investment.