KARACHI: The Pak Suzuki Motor Company Limited (PSMCL) on Tuesday announced second price jump in two variants of Alto660cc by Rs70,000-85,000 from Oct 1 followed by price hike of Rs2,000-6,000 in two-wheelers.

Two-time price increase in Alto suggests the PSMCL is now fully cashing in on its burgeoning demand after losing sales on hot selling WagonR and other models.

Suzuki began Alto production in June announcing VXR and Alto AGS models at a price of Rs1.101 million and Rs1.295m respectively. The company on Aug 1 came out with a price hike of Rs137,000 and Rs138,000. VXR and AGS models now sell at Rs1.308m and Rs1.518m.

The company, in a circular to its authorised dealers, did not attribute any reason for the price hike. However, it said the price hike would not be for the old pending orders, which have been booked with partial advance payment, and/or for those orders in which customers failed to deposit their balance payments within the due requested time.

Alto has emerged as the Suzuki’s saviour at a time when all the assemblers have been observing non-production days (NPDs). Suzuki had so far not observed any NPDs during July-September despite massive sales drop in WagonR model coupled with flat sales in Bolan, Ravi, Cultus and Swift.

Surprisingly, increase in Alto prices had taken the markets by surprise amid stability in the rupee-dollar parity during August-September. Auto makers had been pushing up prices citing the rupee’s depreciation against the dollar.

In the two-wheeler segment, prices of GD110S, GS150, GS150SE and GR150 models have been raised to Rs168,000, Rs178,000, Rs194,000 and Rs265,000 from Rs166,000, Rs175,000, Rs191,000 and Rs259,000 respectively despite declining sales during July-August. PSMCL’s circular issued to the dealers did not mention any reason for the hike in prices.

Suzuki bike sales during 2MFY20 plunged to 3,162 units from 3,738 units in same period last fiscal year. The company’s two-wheeler sales, however, improved to 23,352 units in FY19 from 21,724 units in FY18.

Keeping in view the dismal sales outlook, local car assemblers have slowed down import of semi and completely knocked down kits (CKD/SKD) for cars by 15.5pc during July-August to $123m. Overall import of CKD/SKD for bike assembling came down by 25pc to $13m.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd , 2019