‘Auto industry uplift plan to strengthen makers, vendors’
Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: The Draft Auto Industry Development Programme (AIDP) has been designed to strengthen the auto sector by making the vendors and the manufacturers more interdependent, which will go a long way to expand and strengthen the auto industry.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Engineering Development Board (EDB), Imtiaz Rastgar, said this on Friday while briefing newsmen on the new draft AIDP. He said efforts had been made to include all the issues of stakeholders in the policy to establish a sustainable industry both in the vendor and manufacturing sectors.
“We had a mechanism for the auto industry in the past. But we had not a full-fledged policy for the auto industry. For the first time, the industry has been given a policy and their comments have also been included and those of consumers will be entertained,” said Mr Rastgar. He was flanked by Zahid Yaqoob, a senior official of the EDB.
All the stakeholders are requested to send their comments in three weeks after which the government would finalize the draft for approval of the government, he said.
The EDB CEO said efforts had been made to include all the issues, including Inter-dependencies of vendors and manufacturers in the draft AIDP. The measure, he said, would help in establishing the assemblers and vendor industry on a sound footing. “This is long-term policy as the auto sector need more investments to practically develop,” he said.
He offered no comment when his attention was drawn to another auto policy, which has recently been sent to the ECC without consulting the EDB. The draft, which was pursued by Federal Minister of Industries and Production and Special Initiatives Jahangir Khan Tareen was deferred by the ECC at its last meeting.
The AIDP, he said, has been designed to expand the base of auto industry enabling it to annually export auto parts worth Rs 600 billion. We have suggested measures to check the liberal import of used cars, he said.
He conceded that the existing industry was working under high protection tariff and this had led to the absence of competition and the result was low quality, high cost, fewer models, long delivery times and poor service to customers. However, the possible new entrants into Pakistan auto industry would create competition and eventually people would have quality cars.
"We have responded to the industry with a clear future roadmap by announcing pre-determined five-year tariff so that they could carry out their expansion program to increase production turnover of the auto industry and annual export of parts,” he said.
The proposed programme envisages development of two auto-parts vendor clusters in Lahore and Karachi to reduce the existing monopolistic tendencies of the existing manufacturers by encouraging new entrants.
Zahid Yaqoob, who was one of the key members involved in preparing the AIDP, said the investors would be given guarantee that no other policy on the auto sector would be introduced. The EDB wanted the larger consensus of all the stakeholders and acceptability of the AIDP.