Car sales declined for the first time this year in April, with the slowdown witnessed in sales of the low powered hatchback segment.
Sales of vehicles falling in the 1,300cc and above category increased 7% while those of in the 1,000cc and lower category fell 17%, according to data released by Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association on Friday.
Overall, car sales declined 8% to 13,360 units in April compared with 14,469 units sold in March, data shows.
The country’s largest automobile assembler witnessed a volatile month with sales of Alto, Bolan and Cultus declining while Mehran and Swift rose to mitigate the downward impact.
Star product Mehran gained 5% to 3,266 units during the period under review. Sales of Mehran have increased manifold due to Punjab’s yellow cab scheme in the current financial year. The provincial government aimed to deliver 7,500 cabs to successful applicants in the first half of the financial year
Honda sales declined 23% in April as the company is still in recovery mode following the supply chain disaster. Honda across the world has been facing problems in its supply chain since October 2010 following floods in Thailand from where parts are imported and then locally assembled.
Civic sales fell and came back to normal levels after sales in March crossed the 1,000 mark following backlog of orders as the plant was shut in the previous three months December 2011 to February 2012.
City production finally resumed after a break of four months as the factory rolled out 180 cars during the month.
Indus Motors improved its sales by 13% owing to higher sales of Corolla, the country’s highest selling car. Corolla sales jacked up 17% in April amid launch of new variants by the company in its 1,600cc segment.
With its days numbered, Coure sales fell 313 units during the month. The company announced earlier that they would pull the plug on their smaller variant before June 30, 2012 on account of high cost of production.
Tractor sales stood at healthy position for a third month in a row with 6,295 units in April. The first seven months of the financial year proved to be a daunting journey for the sector with Al Ghazi Tractors and Millat Tractors going completely offline amid imposition of 16% General Sales Tax on its sales. However, the government after looking at the gloomy situation it had created cut tax to 5% from 16%.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 12th, 2012.
COMMENTS (12)
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one classic (though tragic) example of our policy making facing misery due to their wrong policies is death of son of Dr. Sher Afgan in a road crash. he got airbags fitted in his toyota car but it didnt work at the right time. well our policies makers die in toyota and our kids die in bulk in road crashes like the one in kalar kahar
Express Tribune Editor:
Your unnamed correspondent for this news item ought to take the trouble to personally visit Indus Motor and Pak Suzuki in Port Qasim, visit the plant, meet the management, etc. instead of relying on press releases and analyst briefings and simply reproducing those in your paper.
Automotive industry consists of these operations: welding, painting, assembly, and quality control. In Pakistan, technologically complex products are imported from Japan or Thailand, unboxed, and the product put together by apprentices who don't get a living wage. Basically, it is a bolt tightening work. The three assemblers are running a cartel with over priced products, low quality, depreciated models.
Your newspaper should inform readers how much the consumers are losing out to this cartel which has octopus hold on a captive market. Right now, there is a one-sided coverage.
Are you also informing about wear and tear on roads due to excessive motorization, smog, pollution, traffic jams, roads built for tonga age? Cars are luxury goods for the rich and local cars should be taxed 100 percent. Better approach is to invest in public transportation network than private cars.
Leh maal Suzuki on Monday.
Car sales will boost up by many folds in the country if the cars can run on simple tap water, instead of Petrol, CNG and Diesel, the cost of which has gone beyond the control of car owners.
Just curious..whats the price of a Honda City 1500 cc in Pakistan. Here in India it starts from somewhere around 8,00,000 INR
We do not want cheap, mass produced Japanese cars. Why should we pay the price of a sports car for one 1500cc vehicle when you can find EVEN better cars with the same price tag. I suggest we put an end to Toyota's, Honda's and Suzuki's monopoly and allow Ford, GM and Chrysler to settle here instead. Look, the Japanese manufacturers won't even make their entire ranges of models accessible here! Oh yes, and then there are no air bags in standard models. This is not the 20th century gentlemen, we need safe and fuel-efficient vehicles that aren't bad to look at and are affordable. Buy them should not give rise to the ongoing monopoly of motor vehicles.
the author needs to research horoughly first then write facts. the sale of cultus, alto declined because of the production suspension from suzuki. Can somebody ask these japanese money plundrers, why have they deliberately suspended production.... mal-intentions that these manufacturers can justify themselves... probably to create artificial shortage.
About time. Pakistani consumers should wise up to these local assemblers selling over-priced excuses of cars...
Mehran being a "star" product? That car wont be permitted on the roads in developed countries.
Pakistan Automobile Sector is a cartel. The cars are over priced, of poor quality and support old engine technology which are fuel guzzlers. If import of cars is allowed then majority would dump these cars.
Why we write Automobile sector of Pakistan, when all the spares are imported and simply assembled here. Malaysia can say that, Japan lead in the automobile sector. But Pakistan? in reality we have been successfully trying to curb our automobile sector and this is the reason groups like Adam Motors vanished from the scene even after marketing very good products in Pakistan.
"locally manufactured" cars in this country are basically receiving 4 boxes from Thailand, Japan etc...opening these boxes and joining the already assembled contents to form a single item. Much like assembling an Ikea bookshelf.....
Anyway the automobile sector is of no use to innovation and research and development in Pakistan. Automobile groups have never been able to set up a single Research and Development arena in Pakistan in the last 20 years.They simply import spare parts and assemble cars here We always tell their profits but why we never ask them that you are siphoning Profits from Pakistan and in return doing every R&D out of our country. Even Pakistan dont have a single crash test facility of cars. Every country have R&D centers for automobiles supported by Automobile companies and Government must force them to reinvest at least 10 percent of their profits back into the R&D and in universities and then we could be on the path to self reliance in future.