KARACHI: Indus Motors Chairman Ali S Habib, while talking to the media at the company’s facilities in Port Qasim, has said automotive sector is the ‘Mother of all industries’ as it generates mammoth revenue and employment.
Ali S Habib said that the auto industrialists are the highest taxpayers and industry is one of the most documented sectors in the country. He said that GOP must quickly firm up the new auto policy and decide how it wishes to pursue the mobilisation growth i.e through manufacturing or trading and look at the examples of neighbouring countries like India, Thailand and Indonesia who have nurtured their industries until the threshold volumes were achieved to gain competitiveness.
These countries have restriction on import of used cars and have used tariff and non-tariff barriers to ensure domestic production is not damaged irretrievably. No auto manufacturing country permits liberal imports of used cars as Pakistan and here our government would do well to tighten this policy if the industry is to flourish.
Pakistan is set to become the 4th largest populated country by 2030 of 240 million and this present a huge potential for growth of mobility in the country and equally the opportunity of providing employment and skilled jobs for the growing youth.
The Indus Motorss chairman said, “From a humble beginning in 1998 with production capacity of 20 cars a day and work force of 500 employees, we have today grown into a company of over 2700 employees and production capacity of 230 cars a day. Our daily sourcing of parts from local manufactures exceeds Rs110 million and the contribution to exchequer since inceptions exceeds Rs224 billion.”
