Overview
A day before announcing a plant shutdown Indus Motor Company (IMC) showed the first locally-made Corolla Cross Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) to PM Shehbaz Sharif. This is the first locally assembled HEV unit that we are waiting for since last year. Last year Toyota Pakistan announced that the vehicle will be launched in June-July 2023. But the situation of the economy and automotive industry is not the same as the previous year.
IMC successfully produced the first unit of a locally assembled HEV which was a big challenge for the company. A day before the plant shut down, a delegation led by Chief Executive Ali Asghar Jamali and Vice Chairman Shinji Yanagi meet with PM and showed locally made Corolla Cross Hybrid. PM has appreciated the effort of the engineers and company to promote EV production in Pakistan.
IMC Statement Regarding Plant Shutdown
Toyota Pakistan sends a notification to Pakistan Stock Exchange regarding its plant shutdown from June 3 2023 to June 8, 2023. The company has mentioned, “the production is stopped due to shortage of inventory and Latter of Credits (LCs) issue”. They added IMC’s vendors facing trouble in importing raw materials and receiving clearance for their consignment. The approval of LCs is a certain problem for foreign vendors.
The overall situation has made hurdles for the company’s supply chain and vendors are unable to provide raw material to the company. there is an insufficient inventory in the company’s production to continue operation in a smooth way. Production activities disturb by the situation and forced to shut down a plant for the next few days.
As per the situation, the company has decided to halt the production plant for the next 5 days. however, it’s not the first time. IMC faces production issues since the government has made restrictions on import and announced LCs approval for raw material import.
Conclusion
Apart from Toyota, Suzuki and Honda had also announced plant shutdowns several times. Atlas Honda had a plant shutdown for almost 2 months. It shows automakers are facing the worst time. the growth of the automotive industry is not possible in this condition. The situation is going bad with each passing day. All possible hopes of automotive growth are going to end. The vehicle sale badly declined compared to the previous year. Unstable dollar value and devaluation of the rupee value have set the price of cars at a huge rate. Automakers are facing the risk of production and sale.
