Lahore - The auto industry’ bus manufacturing units are operating at record low level of less than 3 percent of their installed capacity, as  all plants have produced merely 630 units of buses in first three quarters of the current fiscal year against the total annual production ability of 26,150 units thanks to the rambling import policy of the government.
At a time when almost all provincial governments are planning to facilitate their public by launching rapid bus services in their provinces the country’s bus assemblers are showing an alarmingly low figures of their production as the major chunk of this mass transport facility is being fulfilled mainly through import, auto industry experts said.
According to the latest data of Engineering Development Board, the major bus manufacturing companies including Hinopak Motors, Gandhara Nissan, Gandhara Industries, Afzal Motors, Daewoo Pak Motors, Tayyaba Motors and Fuso Motors have produced only 630 bus units against their total capacity of 26,150 units in the period of July 2013 to March 2014.
The data shows that Hinopak Motors which has installed capacity of 5,950 units per year, produced only 372 busses of all ranges and ranked first in Pakistan as all other companies production is even below. Gandhara Nissan could produce just 6 units of Nissan SP 210 Bus against capacity of 4,200 units while Gandhara Industries managed to produce 17 units of Isuzu NPR 66PB Bus and Isuzu MT133 Bus against ability of 3,000 units.
Master Motor Corporation Karachi can make 8,500 busses in one year but it could assemble only 13 busses of Master Yuejin and Master Mitsubishi models in 9 months. Likewise Afzal Motors can assemble 3,000 busses but it could show production of just 10 busses. Only the Daewoo Pak Motors could succeed to utilize production capacity a little better as it manufactured 180 busses out of 500 capacity. Fuso Master Motors, having capacity of producing 1000 busses, could not manufacture a single bus throughout the current fiscal year.
Auto industry experts are of the view that though Punjab government has launched rapid bus service in provincial capital, besides initiating more such projects in other cities yet the authorities have imported all busses for those projects.
They said that all bus manufacturers of different models including Hino, Nissan, Isuzu, Master, Daewoo are producing high quality and state of the art buses but Punjab government preferred to import them from China and Turkey.
If govt orders local company to manufacture busses, every bus will provide jobs to at least 100 people directly. “Its unfortunate that country’s local demand of busses is about 6,000 per annum and if all requirement is fulfilled through local production hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created, balance of trade will be improved, GDP ratio will be enhanced, besides reducing running maintenance gradually,” officials in the Engineering Development Board opined, requesting their names not to be mentioned.   The Lahore Transport Company imported 300 busses last year, they said and added that import process takes at least five months and local companies could also produce those 300 buses within this period of five months.
They said that only months after the Metro bus service’s inauguration, the so called state of the art import buses developed various problems including air-conditioning and cooling system failure, while many broke down due to heating up.
They pointed out that the computerized system also crashed in some of the imported buses and foreign experts had to be called in.
The Pakistan Association of Automotive Parts & Accessories Manufacturers chairman Usman Malik appreciating the Punjab government mission of providing comfortable, affordable and rapid bus service to the public, has stressed the need for manufacturing of these busses at local level.
All provincial governments should take serious action to prevent bus import and should device such policies that can enable our own local industry to prosper and to compete in the global auto markets of the world. He said that all bus assemblers have joint ventures with local companies and locally-made bus uses at least 65 per cent local components, leading to the high growth and employment generation in auto parts industry too.
“A comprehensive strategy is required to identify new routes for the convenience of the commuters in all major cities to lessen dependence on cars by introducing culture of buses. In this way our oil import bill will be curtailed while traffic as well as environmental issues will automatically be resolved, he added.