LAHORE - Secretary General (Punjab) of Businessmen Panel, Mian Usman Zulfiqar has said that the government must announce special slap to reduce the prices of locally assembled cars in the upcoming budget to facilitate masses.

He said that local manufactures revise their cars prices whenever they desire so and that too without getting even due approval, which affect the common people badly. The Ministry of Industries must design some mechanism to regulate the local cars assemblers’ prices, he added.

Usman said that though Pakistan doesn’t have the best auto industry, it is a growing market. He suggested some tax measures to reduce the cost of locally produced vehicles and make these more affordable to consumers, by exempting the imports made under SRO 655(I)/2006 and SRO 656(I)/2006 from additional customs duty under SRO 1178(I)/2015.

The BMP official said: “Time has come for the existing players to make prompt investment in capacity expansion, improve localisation and introduce new models,” he said, adding that an increase in production will boost tax revenue and create jobs.

It may be recalled here that Honda Atlas Cars Ltd (HACL) raised the prices of Honda Civic and City by Rs100,000 and BRV by Rs20,000 following devaluation of the rupee against the dollar. It had raised prices in January by Rs50,000-60,000 which is unfortunate.

Similarly, Pak Suzuki had earlier raised the price in January by Rs10,000-20,000 and by another Rs20,000-50,000 this month. The assembler of Toyota Corolla also increased the rates on a number of models twice – first in December 2017 by Rs 50,000-60,000 and then in March by Rs100,000-300,000. He even feared the cars arriving in the next one to two years by new entrants with low proportion of local parts might be more vulnerable to price increase than the existing car assemblers, despite higher localisation.