Local car sales down 4% in January

20,844 units sold compared with 21,717 units in January 2016

KARACHI: Local automobile sales (including LCVs and jeeps) in January 2017 remained 20,844 units, down 4% compared with 21,717 units in the same month last year, according to data released by the Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association (PAMA).

JS Research in its report on Friday commented that the sales were according to market expectations.

A 13% year-on-year decline in Pak Suzuki Motor Company (PSMC) sales was the chief contributor in overall decline of auto sales. Suzuki Ravi sales came down by 38% year-on-year, Suzuki Bolan’s sales declined by 27% year-on-year and Suzuki Mehran sales declined by 13% year-on-year.

The reason behind the massive decline in Ravi and Bolan sales is the completion of Punjab Taxi Scheme last year. Otherwise, excluding the numbers of the taxi scheme, overall automobile sales are increasing and the country may record exception sales by the end of fiscal year 2017 in June.

However, other variants for the company showed better performance, particularly Wagon-R (volumes up 46% year-on-year).

Indus Motor Company (INDU) also witnessed a volumetric decline, with unit sales down 3% year-on-year owing to 8% year-on-year dip in its main seller Toyota Corolla.

Analysts say this is happening because of the tough competition and higher demand for Honda Civic and Honda City.

Meanwhile both Fortuner and Hilux witnessed massive increases in volumes, up 152% year-on-year and 45% year-on-year, respectively on account of recently launched models.

Honda Atlas Cars (HCAR) continues to outperform among the three carmakers with 33% year-on-year growth due to continued demand for the tenth Generation Civic and steadily increasing demand of City variant.

This month’s unit sales of 4,002 were a record for the company.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2017.

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