Leading car-makers increase prices by Rs 30,000

[LahoreEstate]

By Moonis Ahmed

KARACHI: Two leading carmakers have notified increase in prices of their vehicles after witnessing some improvement in sales during the first half of the current fiscal year, sources revealed to Daily Times here on Monday.

Sources said that the Honda Atlas and Indus Motors Company have revised their rates as both the companies have increased prices by almost Rs 30,000. Dealers said that Honda City manual after witnessing an increase of Rs 30,000 rose to Rs 1,239,000 as compared with Rs 1,209,000 earlier. Price of City automatic has gone to Rs 1,359,000 as compared with Rs 1,329,000.

Civic hard top manual has witnessed an increase of Rs 28,500 as it stood at Rs 1,629,000 as compared to Rs 1,600,500. Civic hard top automatic has been revised to Rs 1,711,500 against Rs 1,686,000.

Similarly, Civic sunroof manual has gone to Rs 1,743,500 as compared to previously Rs 1,716,500 and Civic sunroof automatic price stood at Rs 1,849,000 against Rs 1,810,000. The Indus Motors Company has also revised and notified an increase upto Rs 30,000 on different models.

For example, the XLI and GLI will now cost Rs 1,269,000 and Rs 1,384,000 as compared to Rs 1,239,000 and Rs 1,354,000, respectively. Toyota Altis would now cost Rs 1,669,000 against previous Rs 1,639,000. Toyota Altis S/R would be sold for Rs 1,754,000 and Toyota Altis A/T would cost Rs 1,839,000 compared to the previous price of Rs 1,809,000. “The increase in car prices is quite surprising considering the fact that car sales have not observed an expected recovery in first quarter of current fiscal year as compared to last year,” HM Shehzad, Chairman, All Pakistan Motor Dealers Association Chairman told Daily Times. He said that the government had given relaxation to auto assemblers in the auto policy with the removal of federal excise duty in July and they were supposed to reduce prices of cars for the benefit of consumers.

He said semi-knocked down (SKD) and completely knocked down (CKD) kit’s prices had fallen all over the world and similarly steel and other raw material prices also went down. Shehzad was of the view that the car makers had to import SKD and CKD from Japan and the increase in the value of yen increased their cost. “It is expected that other car makers will also increase prices of their vehicles in the near future,” he added. In September, overall auto (cars and light commercial vehicles) sales fell 10 per cent month-on-month with car sales down 4 per cent because of low activity in the month of Ramazan and less working days on account of Eid holidays.

He said that the government got a revenue of Rs 42 billion against import of 81,000 vehicles in 2005-06, Rs 31 billion against import of 56,000 vehicles in 2006-07 and Rs 21 billion against 33,00 vehicles in 2007-08. “Now the government’s revenue has finished in this regard as only 200 vehicles per moth are being imported in the county,” he said.

An industry official said that the rupee had been losing value against foreign currencies since last couple of months, increasing the import cost for the companies. He said that the companies had to increase the prices of different makes due to appreciation of Japanese currency against Pakistani Rupee. Also, the international steel prices have risen very high, thus increasing the cost of production. A few years ago the scenario of the local car market was completely different, as the car manufacturers enjoyed monopoly and used to charge premium for immediate delivery of their vehicles. Leasing companies and Banks indirectly supported them, which offered easy loans to people to buy automobile at very low interest rates.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2009_pg5_4