There is something interestingly mysterious about last month’s import numbers released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. While total imports under transport group decreased substantially both on year-on-year and month-on-month basis, CBU vehicle imports grew by 161 percent month on month to $62.3 million, its highest ever monthly number in recent memory.
The increase in imports of CBU, an abbreviation for completely built units, seems to be a reversal of falling fortunes of vehicle importers. Late last year, the Federal Government reduced the age-limit for used-car import from five years to three, which led to decline in CBU import from $46 million in January 2013 to $22 million by February 2013.
The bulk of CBU import at that time had come from import of motorcars that reached an all time high of 84 percent of total CBU imports. By contrast, motorcar import constituted only 18 percent of these imports this time; whereas import of buses, trucks and heavy commercial vehicles formed a massive 81 percent share of total CBU imports.
To put in perspective, CBU imports of buses, trucks and heavy commercial vehicles stood at $50 million in October 2013, which is about one-third of total imports under this sub-group in FY13. The question, therefore, is who bought these vehicles.
Last week when BR Research spoke to PBS sources, they expressed an inability to comment on these imports numbers. Sources in the automobile manufacturing were just as clueless about the issue. While some suggested that higher import may mean more metro buses on the streets of Lahore, others pointed in the direction of Ministry of Defence Production.
However, speaking to BR Research, Uzair Shah, GM Operations of Punjab Metro Bus Authority, dispelled the notion that the jump in CBU imports came from higher imports by the Punjab government. According to Shah, the last consignment of 19 metro buses arrived from China in September and no plan is on the cards for further import during FY14.
Interestingly, statistics provided by All Pakistan Motor Dealers Association (APMDA) for 4M FY14 does not show any such trend. Instead, the data reports a 56 percent year-on-year decline in the import of buses, trucks, vans and pickups from 1,310 units last year to 570 units. According to the APMDA figures, CBU heavy vehicle imports also declined significantly in terms of value during the four-month period, from an estimated $21 million to a paltry sum of $8 million this year.
The numbers are all the more surprising given that the regulatory duty on import of vehicles remains high, limiting their import by a far margin in previous months. Sources at APMDA insisted that as official representatives of CBU importers, APMDA data should be considered most reliable on the matter, implying that the figures reported by PBS may actually be inaccurate.
It is for the first time in the last six years, that CBU heavy vehicles constituted the highest proportion of import in the transport group; and its mysterious nature is shouting for an explanation. Any takers!?
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