ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Industries and Production Ghulam Murtaza Khan Jatoi, in a written reply to the National Assembly, has said the government is not aware of the actual amount of profits the local car assemblers were making.
“All car manufacturing companies are in the private sector, and as such they do not share the data with regard to the cost of goods sold,” the minister said.
He further said there was no agreement between the government and the cars manufacturers to use locally manufactured parts and adopt international quality control and safety standards.
“From 1987 to 2003, the government followed deletion policy, a local content scheme, which was phased out in 2004 and replaced with the Tariff Based System (TBS) to make the auto sector compliant with Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) under the WTO regime,” he said.
He said since the deletion policy had phased out, there was no criteria for the implementation of deletion programme. “At present EDB issues manufacturing licences/certificates to vehicle assemblers after verifying their manufacturing facilities,” he said.
He admitted that at present there was no standard from the government and all cars manufacturers followed their own standards. “Despite request by the EDB, car manufacturers have yet to share their standards,” he concluded.
