Any body knows about the real news that is WTO and Pakistan do post.
This is what I know
In 1995 Pakistan got its first extension for the automobile industry in which Pakistan was given a 7 year extension as it was one of the " LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES ". It was a conditional extension and the local assemblers were suppose to have a deletion level of 80%+ for all cars but all the manufacturers were not able to come even close to this target. Mehran at 60% was te closest with the 1600cc catagory lagging behind at 15%-25%. The extension finished in Nov 2001 but pakistan was granted an extension of 1 month. The program thus finished in December 2001 and now according to WTO rules import duty should have been finished.But the industry was in no condition of competing with international prices thus the government had to do some thing to protect it.
As a result the govt. asked for an extension of 5 years but only 2 year extension was granted.
The new extension also finished in dec 03 but the local assemblers had only improved the deletion levels fron 5%-10%
thus the local automobile stake holders asked the govt. to apply for another extension.
As a result the govt asked for another extension of 3 years i.e dec 03- dec 06 but in november 04 there were news that it would be rejected and then in dec it was rejected.
A new tariff based system has been introduced but it does not mention any thing about duty on imported CBU's. Therefore as far as I know we are again stuck with overpriced low quality underpowered cars again for 2 years (Tariff based system will end in 2007).
If some1 knows abt all the stuff that might affect the price of cars please post it here.
BTW i saw an awsome suped up RX-8 Black coming out of the airport with no reg number. It was sooooooooo coooool. If there is no duty i can import 1 for just 25 lacs. currently it costs 43 lac:D