Times are quite challenging for the global automotive industry due to the chip shortage and the supply chain crisis, yet still, the Pakistani market seems to be moving in an upward trajectory, thanks to a rather sizeable influx of new cars and companies in the past few years.
It has been reported by Dawn that the car industry has witnessed the highest number of vehicle imports during the 2020-21 fiscal year (FY2020-21).
In FY2020-21, 10,513 units of new SUVs, sedans, vans, 4×4 pickup trucks, and other vehicles have been imported, compared to 1,680 units during the last financial year, 3,716 units the year before that, and 7,424 units in FY2017-18.
Furthermore, with the exclusion of buses and motorcycles, new passenger vehicles boasted the highest number of units imported, at 10,157 units in FY2021.
The import figures of FY2021 draw a stark contrast with the import figures of the previous years. During FY2020, the imports stood at just 893 units. In FY2019, the imports were at 2,427 units, whereas those in FY2018, were at 3,758 units.
The overall vehicle imports were observed to be around $2 billion during FY2021. From that total figure, the import bill of Completely Knocked Down (CKD) kits and Semi-Knocked Down (SKD) kits stood at $1.6 billion. Also, for the first time, the FY2021’s imports include 390 new Electric Vehicles (EVs) and 19 used EVs.
Remarkably, during the first two months of the current financial year (2M-FY22), the imports of CKD and SKD kits for local assembly of vehicles has gone up by 214 percent to $369 million on a Year-on-Year (YoY) basis, while the import of Completely Built-Up (CBU) vehicles grew by 118 percent to $103 million on a YoY basis.
Plus, with new vehicles set to hit the market soon, the import bill for CKDs and CBUs is expected to rise even further and be considerably higher than the previous fiscal year.
However, the matter of chip shortage crisis, rising production costs, delivery delays, and other pertinent problems within the Pakistani car industry cannot be discounted from the ongoing situation, which makes the coming days quite interesting.
