Car Companies

Since there isn’t any good news reaching from the industry, the local auto industry’s situation appears to be worsening every day. There are several causes for this, including the depreciation of the rupee versus the US dollar, economic instability, the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) refusal to provide Letters of Credit (LC), and political unpredictability.

Further delivery delays are expected as a result of the firms’ suspension of bookings and cessation of production owing to these factors, particularly LC.

Discussions last week in the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) were centred on the automobile industry. The PAC was informed at the meeting that consumers had placed Rs. 189 billion as an advance payment to 10 vehicle businesses.

Here is the Breakdown of this Massive Payment:

• 99.2 billion rupees – Toyota Indus Motors (IMC)
• 35.4 billion rupees – Pak Suzuki Motors Company Ltd (PMSCL)
• 21.8 billion rupees – Honda Atlas Cars (HACL)
• 11 billion rupees – Master Changan Motors
• 10.6 billion rupees – Kia Lucky Motors
• 6.9 billion rupees – Hyundai Nishat Motors
• 1.7 billion rupees – Al-Haj Automotive (Proton Pakistan)
• 1.6 billion rupees – Ghandara Nissan Limited (GNL)
• 0.7 billion rupees – Sazgar Engineering Works Limited (SEWL)
• 0.3 billion rupees – Regal Automobile

A manufacturer also informed the PAC that the government had questioned the assemblers about why they were receiving so many client reservations if they were unable to deliver the vehicles on schedule.

Production Halt

As we previously stated, IMC would temporarily halt manufacturing before the end of the month, mostly because of an LC problem. Following suit, Kia Lucky Motors has chosen to take three to four non-production days (NPDs) in the current month, and if the LC issue is not fixed, it too intends to operate in a single shift.

Due to the Eid holidays, Honda has also experienced 1-2 days of NPDs this month. The business, however, has no plans for further NPDs.

Hoping, the automobile industry will have some good news to share with us so that we can escape this chaos and begin production and delivery.