Local auto industry believes that the proposed policy for electric vehicles (EV) is in contradiction with the Auto Industry Development Policy 2016-21. Also, the proposed Electric Vehicles (EV) Policy does not support 'Make in Pakistan' which shows the EV project is driven with vested interests.
EV policies in the US, India, China, and elsewhere are designed to subsidize local manufacturing while ours is import driven. "One of the biggest issues with the proposed EV policy is that it seems to base on CBU import instead of incentives for manufacturing," said a source in the auto industry.
"The current AIDP took four years to get introduced as thorough input was taken from numerous platforms including CCP," he added. He maintained that the AIDP covers Electric Vehicles as well; hence there is no need to have a separate policy for this segment.
"The fact is that there is ample space in AIDP 2016-21 for including EV manufacturing under the provisions for Greenfield for new entrants (as with $1.3 billion investments even new entrants will be interested) while existing manufacturers can also be accommodated for fresh plants," said the source.
He said the government must promote local manufacturing to truly benefit from this opportunity. He explained that 30 percent of EV consists of critical EV parts only (Battery, Motor and Battery Management Systems) while rest of the 70 percent vehicle parts are regular and most of them are already in local production. "This is a key point to consider. Our policy makers should not insist on the import of CBUs and must focus on the production of 70 percent parts locally to support 'make in Pakistan' production," he suggested.