ISLAMABAD: The import of three-year-old cars increased 6 percent to $456 million during recently concluded FY18 from $431m in FY17.
As a result, the import of parts and accessories remained robust for domestically assembled vehicles during FY18 despite increasing fuel prices and multiple price rises by motor companies in just one year, reported Dawn.
Also, new entrants into the country’s automobile sector are set to start their assembly within the next one to two years of new imported vehicles.
Since ages, the import policy of used cars has been limited to personal baggage scheme and was imported because of a shortage of adequate locally-assembled cars.
Import of parts and accessories for domestically assembled cars surged by 23 percent, touching $809 million compared against $660 million in FY17.
As per Senior Vice Chairman Papaam, Mohammad Ashraf Sheikh increased imports of parts and kits were connected to soaring production volume of vehicles.
Mr Sheikh said with the rupee depreciating against the dollar, the pressure to localize parts would keep on increasing on the assemblers.
Since December 2017 to date, the rupee has depreciated by almost 21 percent against the dollar, increasing costs of imported kits and parts.
Import of parts and accessories for local assembly of trucks, buses and other heavy vehicles grew surged 61 percent, touching $406 million in FY18 compared to $252 million in FY17.
During FY18, the import of completely built-up (CBU) buses, trucks and other heavy vehicles nosedived 26 percent to $234 million compared to $316m in FY17.
Due to firm measures of the government, an official in heavy vehicle industry stated the imports of used trucks and prime movers fell.
The official said those who were previous import CBU units had moved towards local assembly especially in below five tonnes truck category hence propelling imports of parts and accessories.
He added average localization in heavy vehicles stood at 40 percent.
Some vendors revealed they were reliant on imported raw material for local assembly of several vehicles since any changes in global prices of raw materials and instability in rupee-dollar parity impacts the costing, pushing up prices of vehicles.
Bike part imports grew 15.5 percent, touching $106m in FY18 against $92m in FY17, whilst import of CBU import of bikes escalated by 59 percent, touching $5.7m in FY18 against $3.5m in FY17.
