industry grow

Sale of locally assembled vehicles increased by 22 percent during 2005-06. Accord-ing to the statistics by Pakistan Automotive Manu-facturers Association 155,514 cars were sold from July 2005 to June 2006.

During 2004-05 this in-crease was 32 percent. Local production of cars also increased by 27 percent and reached 160,642 units.

Other products of local auto industry also registered increase in production during 2005-06. Production of trucks jumped to 4,518 from 3,204 produced in 2004-05.

Two categories of light commercial vehicles, including Potohar Jeep of Suzuki and Defender of Sigma Motors, registered a sharp rise in production with 1182 units, up from 444 produced in 2004-05.

In the category of van, being assembled only by Suzuki Motors with the brand name of Bolan, production jumped to 10,429 in 2005-06 from 7,319 in 2006-07.

The year 2005-06 witnessed a sharp rise in production of pickups, which jumped to 32,053 against 25, 177 produced in 2004-05. During 2005-06, the two assemblers of tractors product produced a total of 48,887 tractors during 2005-06 compared to 43,578 in 2004-05.

In 2005-06, a total of 520,124 motorcycles were produced during 2005-06 as compared to 416,189 in the previous year. Buses were the only category where a sharp decline was registered in production where 825 units were assembled in 2005-06 as compared to 1,762 manufactured in last year.