A meeting was held at the office of Minister for Water and Power Khawaja Asif on 1st of September to talk about the new Auto Policy 2015-20. The meeting was attended by Dr Mifta Ismail, Chairman Board of Investment (BoI), Tariq Bajwa Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), Arif Azim Secretary Ministry of Industries and Production, and Minister for Water and Power, Khawaja Asif who was the convenor, with deputy convener Muhammad Zubair.
Two things that the press caught were the obvious disappointment on the faces of the attendees and a quote by the Minister of State/Chairman Privatization Commission, Muhammad Zubair after attending a two-hour meeting, “Yeh mulk taraqi nahi kar sakta” (This country cannot move forward). Due to the stern attitude of FBR, the second meeting discussing the auto policy also didn’t bear any fruits.
For initial two years, the committee had recommended 10% duty on import of both localized and non-localized parts. The proposed rate for previous years has been 35% on localized parts. FBR, however, does not agree with single rate structure of duty.
Another concern among the participants was the language of the policy. Tariq Bajwa and Arif Azim maintained insisted that the language should be unambiguous to avoid unnecessary lawsuits.
“We want unambiguous Auto Policy so that it should not be delayed further through the legal process,”
Chairman FBR Tariq Bajwa was quoted saying,
“If new entrants are offered incentives at par with existing OEMs then new investment in auto sector will not come,”
FBR wants a level playing field for the new entrants with regards to the incentive.
There will be another meeting, which will hopefully finalize the Auto Policy of 2015-20. Fingers crossed, it will encourage new parties to engage in the auto sector and hopefully will entice foreign auto manufacturers as well.
Story: BR
Interesting share but i would request the author to research more deeply. Some of the things being stated by FBR Chairman are justified. Khawaja Asif and Engineering Development Board are favoring local assemblers and want new-entrant incentives to be granted to existing three players as well – Paksuzuki, Toyota Indus and Honda Atlas. These three assemblers have been getting incentives for decades.
The situation will remain the same if there are no incentives for new entrants. Mere 3-4 years of incentives are not enough and MKD’s (Medium Knock Down) kits are not covered as well. The government has been working on this policy since 2012 but like the previous auto policies so far its turning out to be a pro-assembler and anti-consumer policy.
1. There is no enforcement of safety standards in this policy – no mandatory airbags, immobilizer, or crash testing.
2. There is no enforcement of a time limit on how long a specific model can be produced (paksuzuki influenced the government to withdraw this condition from the policy)
3. There is no reduction of duty on new CBUs (govt only wants ppl to import used cars)
4. No road-map of transfer of modern technology to local vendors.
5. No plan for exporting vehicles – (our existing products do not meet regulatory requirements of other countries due to lack of safety and emission standards )
6. No plan for enforcing modern emission standards.
7. No plan for offering modern technology vehicles in Pakistan in line with other nations.
So far this policy is not addressing consumer interests sadly.
Also just to mention Paksuzuki General Manager has met with Shahbaz Sharif and Japanese Ambassador has met with PM Nawaz Sharif to ensure that existing Japanese assemblers are protected.
Japanese mafia is trying to block the entry of Vokwagen, General Motors and Nissan which are interested in investing in Pakistan but are not being facilitated by government at all. Their representatives have met with government officials many times.
How much money did they bribe Khawaja Asif with?????? We want new car makers and cheap cars in Pakistan………kitna khoun chosain gai yeh politicians hamara…..delaying auto policy is criminal negligence……
Go Nawaz Go…. heavy taxes have been imposed on car registration and transfer. Ishaq Dollar is idiot minister, it has and will Sink the ship of PML-N, they are more than Rascals..
Khawaja Asif does knows ABC of auto mobiles and the FOOOLLLLLL is sitting to make auto policy like he make for WAPDA. Noora League is Dung Tapao team with no vision, most of the government posts are filled with Noora relatives. they are looting our country with BIVI BACHOON SMAIT . So dear don’t keep any hope on them.
Unable to understand what Khawaja Asif (Wasa & Wapda) has to do with car policy? Isn’t it funny?
Secondly, Sharif Family is always more inclined towards traders and that too locals because of easy kickbacks while a multinational especially from Europe will never offer any single penny to these speed money earners.
India is so flexible that they have manufacturing / assembling facilities of almost all top brands in their country. All the corrupt departments and persons are participating in formulation so we should not be shocked with such news. Our Government wants to have profits and taxes from day rather then attracting the investment by incentives and slowly and gradually (when these foreign companies develop interests and stakes) than you may increase the taxes slowly and gradually. This is how third world countries and sincere people do the business.
India is not flexible, rather, multinational companies find THEIR OWN advantage by selling their products in a country with more than a billion niggers.
Waaah
What is a fact needs to be accepted. Instead of calling them niggers which is disrespectful we should look at their strengths and learn from them. Our auto industry is lagging behind all regional players by leaps and bounds. Auto assembling started in Pakistan in 1950s by National Motors (general motors overseas division) at a time when Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia were behind us. Population of all these 3 countries is less than Pakistan. U can also took a look at Uzbekistan which has a non-existent auto industry before 2000 and now have higher output than Pakistan.
Stop finding mistakes in other countries and defending Japanese firms in Pakistan which are dumping junk.
I think the government will never like to approve the new auto policy if there are not sufficient amounts of their “Commissions”. All the governments’ representatives only think of their “Commissions” not the country’s progress into new world of technologies and some favour to the users. They get huge commissions from all three joints (Suzuki, Honda & Toyota) and according to my opinion “Suzuki” is the biggest commission payer to government in terms of bribe and gifts. This is because the products of Suzuki are the worst in Pakistan.
I 100% agree with you.