Additional taxes will cripple industrial sector: Business leader

KARACHI: Lucky Motor Corporation (LMC) has announced not to jump on the bandwagon of reducing prices of ita”””s vehicles. The company maintains that its price hike came after a long period unlike other industry players who increase prices regularly and then decrease them by only a small margin.
In a notice to its dealers, the company proclaimed to maintain the prices set in July because their price hike was not as severe as that of other market players.
This was also confirmed by AL Habib Capital Markets auto analyst Asad Ali, who said, “they are maintaining the same prices because their price hike was not severe as compared to other players”.
“LMC has always believed in being fair and transparent in our pricing policy. Being a customer-centric company, we took the unprecedented decision to maintain our vehicle prices for over two years since the launch of our flagship models,” said LMC in a statement.
Other industry players decreased their car prices on the back of rupee appreciation against the dollar, noted Asad Ali.
The recent rise in car prices was partly reversed since they were based on a rupee-dollar parity of 235, while the preceding increase (in April 2022) was based on a rupee-dollar parity of 185.
“This means that if the exchange rate drops below 200, we may see more price reductions by automakers,” he added.
“While companies have been forced to adopt a wait and watch strategy to monitor the fluctuation in the exchange rate to see where prices will go, the increase was inevitable,” the company said.
“To help sustain our business, we recently increased the price by 14% on July 18, 2022.
We feel this was a reasonable increase given the significant devaluation of rupee.”-Agenceis