Dr Hanif Mughal, Senior Vice President of Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW), said on Sunday that automakers are responsible for their business losses of billions of rupees as greed, incompetence, dishonesty, and ignoring competition brought these companies to the brink of collapse. He said that import restrictions had damaged this sector because these companies continued to rely on imports and ignored local manufacturing for decades.

These companies don’t deserve to be called automakers, as they are merely auto assemblers that import parts worth billions of dollars from different countries to assemble cars locally that are substandard in quality.

Hanif Mughal said these irresponsible companies have continuously violated the principles of honesty and competition, forcing people to buy substandard and unsafe vehicles at high prices and not allowing other popular brands to survive in Pakistan.

The quality of their products is such that the Japan-assembled old models cost more in Pakistan than their newer models, and they are more popular among the public because they are more comfortable, safer, reliable, and better in every way.

He said that according to a company that has been assembling vehicles in Pakistan since the eighties, it had lost nineteen billion rupees in the first quarter of the last financial year due to import restrictions. In contrast, according to another company, its net profit has decreased by 89%.

He said that at present, all the big companies have to stop the production process again and again, due to which they incur huge losses. However, they still want to import parts instead of technology to start local manufacturing.

In this situation, even the bank employees have found it difficult to meet the auto financing targets as the purchasing power of the public has been depleted.

On the other hand, the motorcycle manufacturing companies in Pakistan have adopted a policy of reducing dependence on imports, due to which their operations have not been affected as much as those of automakers despite import restrictions, the depreciation of the rupee, high petrol prices, and the reduced buying power of the people, he observed.