You are right about the salaries. I talked with an ex-mechanic of a 3s dealership of one of our local desi japani brands once and he told me that they are officially not the employees of the company and are just hired by the dealership. The way they earn their salary is by how many cars they check during the month. there are actually a few mechanics in the market where I live who have left working at the dealerships because they could not make ends meet.

There are a lot of ways to improve the auto industry. unfortunately, it is not a fair and free market with big players who have essentially neutered the market since the last few decades. Real growth in the market is still not present.

China is a different beast. It has truly only one thing in sight, “If others can do it, we can do it”

In Pakistan, our leaders are of the mind set, “if we can have a outside brand with a brand name, why waste time in making it locally?”

Look at the EV policy. I believe the main focus is to get EV brands from other nations like china to setup assembly plants. No where dose the policies explicitly emphasize on developing and promoting local talent or local EV companies.

I believe A lot needs to change policy wise if we are to stand any chance of ever seeing this industry in Pakistan take any meaningful shape.

“We must utilize our plus-points to our advantage.”

Strongly agreed! We have the talent in the country.

Unfortunately the biggest negative point against us are our own ineffectual, short sighted leaders…

Agreed. Further segregation could be that the new CBU imports are only large cars and SUVs. For Used cars, we only allow small 1000cc and below cars, SUVs and MPVs as cheap options for the masses.

Or the best option, we can look at how other countries, with CBU import only auto industries like Philippines work, and tailor something along those lines.

That will create a lot of jobs as well to cater for the needs for the auto market.

However, there is one thing that we must boost in order to make all that work. we must ensure that we have a good vendor industry which is making and exporting vehicle parts to other countries. We export parts and import CBU vehicles. it is a good business model. It could work.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

This is exactly how China prospered it’s auto industry. In the 80s-90s they made joint ventures with these foreign companies that made it necessary for any foreign auto company to have a 50% stake with a local Chinese company. What that did was that it allowed these Chinese companies to have proper transfer of technology so they can completely manufacture those vehicles in house with every single part and perhaps use that knowledge to even make cars of their own! That is how so many companies like Geely, FAW and SAIC came into existence and is now selling their own vehicles. They have now reverted this 50% rule since they are now well capable of making their own cars, with their own engineering and designs and are also capable of making their own innovations!

Here in Pakistan we have ironically been paying royalties to be even allowed to assemble and sell a vehicle of said company, of which most if not all profits go back to that very company itself! What’s in it for us?? 🙄😕

https://carspiritpk.com/free-market-really/#comment-9988

These auto “assemblers” don’t even offer good salaries! What is the benefit of offering employment which earns barely-scrape-through-the-30-days-cycle and does not enable any opportunities offered by a disposable income.

In addition to what you proposed, our local JVs can acquire ownership stake in the companies whose new/used-certified CBUs they will sell here. This will make at least part of the profit of the foreign principal returns to Pakistan.

The government can even make a law that for any foriegn brand to be allowed to sell vehicles in Pakistan, they have to sell a certain %age stake to a Pakistani-origin company (e.g. their own dealer) and/or be traded at PSX. They must also offer employment to a certain number of Pakistanis at their factories.

This is a Chinese-style policy, we should be looking at how China has harnessed its immense market size to tame foreign interests and to protect local interests. Look at how China has progressed at full-accelerator! Pakistan is also a large population country, 6th by number. We must utilize our plus-points to our advantage.

Agreed! Plus, used imports of JDMs created more jobs than “car assembly” would ever make. I remember that there used to be more than a dozen verified and trusted used JDM car dealerships operating in Karachi alone, with full professionalism and even some after sales service! If we allow in both used and new imports in the country, we could simply make more jobs and more profit by having more dealerships and service stations!

What’s worse, we expected products to get launched which will make tough competition against the big three and possibly bring the market to it’s level. That never really happened! Instead these new companies launched 50+lac CUVs that don’t come no where near in competition with big threes offerings. If we look at the newcomers product lines we could easily see that they have actually actively avoided taking direct competition with other companies, each trying to make money in their own league and pricing point.

In the end, PakSuzuki is still the only assembler to offer a cheap car a Middle class person would perhaps consider at 15+lacs starting price. Shame!

I’ve tried making comments too, but no matter how tame and clean, they never get approved lol 😛 Maybe they don’t want anyone bad mouthing their sponsors? 😉

I agree with you 100 percent! Cars should be fully imported in Pakistan.

Not only do these companies import parts. They then have to establish an assembly line and also hire and train assembly line workers for the assembly process. People might argue that means a lot of jobs.. IT DOES NOT!

Do a search of how many employees Toyota Indus Motors have you will only get a number of around 5000 to 6000. Only that few jobs in all the time they have been operating in Pakistan. That is not Good!

“Indirect jobs”. That is just any number they can convince the other guy to believe. Again if we look at all the big car markets in Almost all the big cities of Pakistan, the JDM imports have created far more jobs then the local assemblers even did.

This topi drama of local assembly would only work if that truly lead to localization. With each passing year more and more of the assembly was done with local parts. That has not happened in Pakistan in over 3 or 4 decades since these local japani came and took over our auto industry in their coup.

This forced local assembly only adds more cost and companies have to cut corners by downgrading the product. The best thing is if all local companies only import cars. It is working in other nations and it will work here. Companies can still offer 3s dealerships and services. That will also bring the prices down because the big cost of the assembly plant and assembly line workers will be cut out. If an eye is kept on the prices of the cars vs their international prices in the region, I think we can enjoy a fair car market for once….

Yeah, we anticipated with new companies coming, we will get the cars at 30% to 50% reduced rate hoping it will also push big3 to control prices orreduce while compromising on quality keeping in view of the companies origion i.e. China or Korea in most cases. However it turns out, newcomers saw the opportunity and decided if big3 can do it why can’t we. End result they started lanching their cars even at par with big3 or even costlier. What an entry.

They did to me the same, and I try not to be rude.