Car sales grow 21.4 percent

KARACHI: Sales of passenger cars increased 21.4 percent in the first five months of the current fiscal year, July-November period, driven by a rising demand for 1,000cc and below category vehicles seemingly from the ride-sharing services, analysts said on Monday.

“The five-month sales were higher than our expectations, .... we have revised our full year sales estimate of 250,000 units from 236,000 units earlier, up 17 percent year-on-year,” Rai Omar Basharat, an analyst at Topline Securities, said.

Basharat said in November 2017, local car assemblers managed to sell 21,091 units (including light commercial vehicles, vans and jeeps), up 18 percent year-on-year and -10 percent sequentially or month-on-month as yearend is a leaner period for auto sales.

“The change in import procedure as well as demand from online ride sharing services has contributed to the strong demand in outgoing month,” he added.

Numbers released by Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association (PAMA) showed, the auto sales hit 87,273 units compared to 71,877 in the same period last fiscal year. A category-wise breakup shows that cars having 1300cc or above engines, sales saw a boost of 7.62 percent as a total of 40,435 cars of 1300cc were sold in the period under review as against 37,572 units a year earlier.

“In 1300cc and above category, sales depicted a growth of one percent month on month but were down by 5.0 percent year on year to 8,087 units mainly on account of stable demand of Civic/City and delivery of pre booked Corolla,” a report by Arif Habib Limited said.

A total of 19,385 units of Suzuki Cultus and Suzuki WagonR were sold in 1000cc category, against 11,988 units in the previous year, capturing an increase of 61 percent.

One analyst termed it a huge increase in sales for 1,000 CC cars, as both WagonR and new variant of Cultus saw amazing success in the country during this period. “People like the new arrivals,” he added.

“Dispatch of 1000cc category cars exhibited an uptick of 31 percent year-on-year, while sales were down by 30 percent month-on-month to 3,479 units particularly due to massive one-off sales uptick witnessed in Wagon R during the month of October 2017” the Arif Habib Limited report said.

In the period under review, the sales of 800cc and below 1000CC cars, Suzuki

Mehran and Bolan, increased 23 percent to 27,453 units from 22,317 units sold last year.

The Arif Habid Limited report added that in the under 1000cc category, Mehran did not fail to astonish as its sales continued to rise to clock in at 3,958 units.

A total of 3,850 buses and trucks were sold in the five months, up 19 percent, against 3,234 units sold during the corresponding period last year.

Farm tractors sales recorded a growth of 54 percent as 27,313 units were sold in the period, compared to 17,732 units last fiscal.

Jeep sales reached 5,818 units against 187 during the same period last year, fueled by Honda’s new edition of BR-V, whose 4,410 units were sold during these five months. Pick-up sale was recorded at 11,810 units against 9,427 units sold during the same period last year.

A total of 787,347 motorcycles and three-wheelers were sold during this period, which is higher by 20.76 percent compared to 651,983 units last year.