That part is always constant, regardless of who’s in charge 😅😆

The only thig that remains unchanged with our government is their total lack of interest in, or understanding of, the local auto sector and their complete cluelessness when it comes to handling it.🤦‍♂️😂

Their rookie mistake was that they trusted the government’s policies to remain unchanged 🤷‍♂️

Well said!

I have always wondered, being a CBU importer is easy. It means less setup costs and no large investments locally. Easy to make a good profit.

They have made their profits. Now even if they leave (which I hope they do not) they will not suffer too much.

However the ones who will suffer as usual will be the consumers who already have bought their product. Again, if worse comes to worse, the customer is on the receiving end and the loosing end too. 😥

PakWheels also has an article on it and surprisingly there is actually some discussion under it https://www.pakwheels.com/blog/mg-hs-price-increased-by-rs-23-lacs/.

Overall it just means that car sellers who were willing to follow the policy in letter but to cheat it in spirit have been cornered. With any policy encouraging CKDs, it is just a natural progression that CBUs will be tightened. Previously there were only 3 assemblers and the government wanted to “support” them. Now there are many many assemblers and there is even more incentive to discourage the new/used imports.

However this kind of knee jerk policy change in fact discourages investment. As you know importing a piece and selling it to the customer means being a “trading company”, rather setting up an assembly plant and striving for at least a few % localization requires too much effort and risk compared to just being a shopkeeper.
If the government totally bans imports today, MG will be in no kind of (monetary) loss. They already earned lots of money on each piece they sold. The only loss they will have is the “loss of opportunity” of making further profit.

CBUs are of higher build quality so the customers will definitely pay anything to get one.

I believe MG (and maybe even Proton) are the victims of their own practices. The auto policies’ ambiguity about the number of CBU imports that a company could get into the country allowed these companies to mainly focus on the CBUs; confident in the fact that the situation will continue and there was no need to waste money or time on local assembly. People want the the quality of the CBU anyway. They trust it more. Why rock the boat.

Problem was/is, that is like putting all your eggs in a very shaky basket which could fall anytime. In the uncertain environment of policies, regulation and taxation in Pakistan, that is extremely risky! Unfortunately, risk taken, money invested, local assembly ignored and self-caused serious s**t storm achieved.

All I can say at this point is I hope MG did do some work on local assembly and they are close to being ready at least. If not, See you MG. It was nice while it lasted.🙋‍♂️