Pakistan Motorcycle Production Passes One Million Units

What should have happened in the 70's is happening now but better late than never. Motorcycles are finally 'Made In Pakistan'. Local manufacturing of motorcycles has made motorcycle rates immune from the variations in Dollar and Yen currency rates ! Pakistani manufacturers of Chinese and Japanese motorcycles crossed a one million mark. Japanese makes loose their share of the Pakistani market to 51% to the Chinese. Now only if the Chinese can help local brands of Cars break the near monopoly of the Japanese.

The Chinese very cunningly transferred technology to the Pakistani manufacturers to to eat up the Japanese share of the market. At the start of this century, 99 percent of the market share was with the Japanese brands which shrunk to 51.5 percent, while the local Chinese brands have a share of 48.5 percent.

The production of motorcycles in the country crossed one million units during the first eleven months of recently passed fiscal year 2010-11.Pakistan automobile brand members dominated by Japanese brands accounted for over 670,000 units while the non-members, mostly Chinese models produced over 400,000 unites from July-May (2009-10), according to Engineering Development Board (EDB).

Chinese motorcycles are making fast inroads in the local market against the Japanese brands, the EDB sources said.

Honda with sales of over 438,028 units till May this year was on top, followed by Yamaha that produced 113,288 units, the sources said while quoting Pakistan Automobiles Manufacturing Association (PAMA) statistics. The sources said that even in PAMA members, the next three largest producers are local brands using Chinese technology, adding that each of them produced more units than the Japanese brand of Suzuki. On the top is Hero that has produced 31,210 units till May and enjoys 4.5 percent share in the PAMA production, the data revealed.

The production of the company grew by 69 percent against 18,388 units produced in 2008-09, they said adding that only eight local, Chinese brands and three Japanese brands were PAMA members. The Chinese motorcycle producers have cumulatively produced over 114,000 motorcycles this year the total motorcycle production is estimated by the industry circles at around 1.1m units this year.

The sources said that more than 56,750 Japanese motorcycles rolled in during the first 11 months of the fiscal year 2009-10 adding that the local brands with Chinese technology produced 514,000 units, including around 35,000 three wheelers.

The high deletion in motorcycles has facilitated the local entrepreneurs to launch their own brands and not worry about imports.