Because the country assembles cars through imports, the government discourages customers from purchasing cars in order to avoid depletion of foreign exchange reserves.
Furthermore, a sharp depreciation of the US currency against the rupee increased the cost of imports, encouraging automakers to raise prices. This resulted in a decrease in sales.
According to local research companies using Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association (PAMA) data on Thursday, the previous month of March saw the second highest monthly sales at 27,131 units.
Muqeet Naeed, an analyst at Ismail Iqbal Securities, noted that the first significant reduction in sales, of 25%, occurred in January 2022, following the government’s restrictive measures. He further said: “That (25% drop) was due to higher sales in December 2021, in anticipation of an increase in taxes (in January 2022).”
Prior to the imposition of the restrictive restrictions, the country had seen record-high monthly sales.
The reduction in April is mostly due to a drop in sales below 1,000cc, with Alto sales nearly halving to 5,009 units; however, the impact was partially offset by growth in 1,000cc car segments, with Cultus sales nearly tripling to 1,745 units.
Pak Suzuki Motors also started delivering the next-generation Swift model, selling 2,273 units in the month. “Barring that the 1,300cc car segment would have declined by 25% month-on-month”, he said.
According to Sunny Kumar of Topline Securities, Honda Atlas car sales fell by 28 percent month over month to 2,629 units in April 2022, driven by a 31 percent drop in City and Civic sales.
Similarly, Indus Motors saw an 18 percent drop in sales from the previous month due to a 24 percent drop in Corolla and Yaris sales.
In April 2022, Pak Suzuki sales fell 16 percent month over month to 12,639 cars. Except for Swift due to the launch of a new version and Cultus due to ease of manufacturing concerns, all of the company’s variants recorded a monthly reduction, he said.
He said that Hyundai Nishat sales were only down 1% month over month to 1,287 units in April 2022, owing to increased sales of the Porter (+63%) and Sonata (+17%).
Auto sales fell 18 percent month on month to 22,370 units, according to Arif Habib Limited analyst Mahe Rukh Fatima in a statement:- “increase in car prices and rise in cost of financing (to end customers)”.
On a yearly basis, sales remained high in the month under review, as many new consumers rushed to buy automobiles before the expected price spike. Given that companies continued hinting at a big increase in production costs and significant rupee depreciation.
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