KARACHI, Aug 31: A leading foreign tractor making company is searching for a local partner in Pakistan for setting up an assembly plant. Belarus, Minsk Tractor Works, has informed the Ministry of Industries and Production about its plans. At present, the company is making tractor shipments to Pakistan with the help of some agents.

Meanwhile, confusion has gripped the market as one of the trading companies of Belarus tractor has come out with a claim that it is planning to set up a tractor assembly plant, while another company has emerged with a claim that it has already signed an agreement with Belarus tractor makers.

Being one of the agents and importers of Belarus tractor, chief executive of Shahzad Trade Links, Shahzad Riaz has written a letter to the Prime Minister and other federal ministries on August 30 to tell the whole situation.

He said that Hero Motors Limited, Hyderabad had informed the Ministry of Industry that Minsk Tractor Works, Republic of Belarus had authorized the company to assemble and manufacture tractor parts of Belarus in Pakistan. The company had also quoted the contract number and date of the contract.

He said that he had approached the Joint Secretary of Ministry of Industry, Arifa Saboohi, who on his request had sent a letter to the Minsk Tractor for confirmation. In reply, the Minsk Tractor informed the Joint Secretary that “Hero Motor has not been authorized by the company.”

However, executive of Minsk Tractor informed the secretary that the company was still in the process of choosing a partner for setting up assembly plant in Pakistan, Shahzad said while giving hard copies of representations between Minsk Tractor and Joint Secretary, Ministry of Industries.

Shahzad Riaz said his main aim in passing on the whole story to the higher authorities of the government was to bring to the public a misrepresentation and false information made by Hero Motors. He said that the government, in the budget 2005-2006, had allowed the local manufacturers to import duty free tractors only up to 2,500 units and this is the reason that many companies are trying to get approval of their future assembly projects in order to make windfalls.

He said that his company had been importing Belarus tractors for the last two years and in the last one year it had supplied 2,500 tractors to the farmers. He said the company had also signed an agreement in May 2005 to import 9,000 units.

The company, Shahzad said, was also finalizing about assembly and manufacturing of Belarus Tractors in Pakistan.

He recalled that another agent of Belarus –- FECTO — had also used the facility by importing various tractors but the company failed to deliver cheap tractors to the farmers. He said that Hero Motors was trying to get the same benefit.

On the contrary, General Manager, Hero Motors Limited, Shahid Pervaiz told Dawn that the company was planning to launch the local assembly of Belarus Tractor in the next four to five months. The company would initially roll out the tractor at a government’s approved deletion of 53 per cent.

“We have already submitted our deletion programme as per government requirement three months back,” he said adding that currently vendor verification is going on while officials of Engineering Development Board would visit their 15 acre plant at Hyderabad.

“The new locally assembled tractor is likely to hit the market in January-February 2006,” he said adding that the new project of Hero Motors would create 2,000 jobs.

“We have signed a contract to bring 3,000 Belarus tractors (completely built up units), while 500 units have already arrived,” he said adding that the tractor is available at Rs 565,000.

To a query that a trading company is trying to grab manufacturing permission from Belarus tractor makers, he said Hero Motors had already signed an agreement with Belarus for local manufacturing and the Industry Ministry had already given go-ahead to the Hero Motors.