Pak Suzuki Motor Company (PSMC) has announced that it will keep its production plant closed for three days during February 2020.
According to the details, the leading Japanese auto manufacturer in Pakistan released in which it stated that the company would observe as many as 3 non-production days (NPD’s) in February. The company’s notification supports no reason as to why it decided to observe NPD’s for the second consecutive month in 2020. Pak Suzuki wrote a letter to Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) to inform about the decision of closing its plant on 3rd, 4th, and 10th February. Previously, the automaker kept its production plant closed on all Mondays of January 2020 that summed up to 4 non-production days. It’s also interesting to note here that 5th February will be a public holiday on account of Kashmir Day and the production facility of the company will be closed on this occasion too. The primary understandable reason for observing NPDs is the sharp decline in sales of automobiles in the local sector. The unsold inventories might be piling up for Pak Suzuki as well, and the automaker would want to clear them before producing the additional amount of units. It is worth mentioning here that Pak Suzuki didn’t observe any NPDs during the July to December period of the ongoing fiscal year 2019-20; however, due to low demand, the company is forced to reduce production now.
Pak Suzuki’s sales went down by nearly 30% in the first half of the current fiscal year, which could have been worse if the sales of the 660 cc Alto had followed a similar downtrend. The company sold 23,658 units of Alto in this period that helped in least-impacting the overall sales of the auto manufacturer. The automaker sold more units of Alto than the combined number of units of all its other models. On the other hand, Honda Atlas, which was most affected by the plunging sales, had observed a whopping 107 NPDs in the first half of FY 2019-20. However, the company announced to keep its production plant operational throughout January 2020. Similarly, Toyota Indus also observed 50 NPDs in the period specified above, but since November 2019, it’s working on all days under a single shift.
The decline in sales was attributed to the sharp depreciation of the local currency against the US dollar. Nonetheless, Pakistani Rupee has stabilized over the past 4 months, yet the car prices have kept on going upward with no reason specified by the auto manufacturers. In a recent development, Pak Suzuki has also raised the price of Suzuki Cultus VXL and AGS variants by Rs.10,000 and attributed it to the addition of an upgraded infotainment system.
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