Due to increasingly high infrastructure investments that encourage cheap and lasting commercial vehicles, Chinese trucks may gain more popularity on the roads of Pakistan in the face of Japanese rigs.
In order to deal with the future growth in demand, Karachi-based Ghandhara Nissan Limited started producing China’s Dongfeng trucks back in 2013. Ghandhara expects that the Chinese truck sales will more than double, reaching 200 units by the end of the year and that they will surpass the Japanese UD truck deliveries in two years.
Muazzam Pervaiz Malik stated, senior executive director for marketing of the UD Trucks Corporation stated that “Initially they were scared about the quality, but China has improved, with the China-Pakistan economic corridor, more dams and motorways, we expect truck demand to grow.”
South Asia’s second-largest economy is expected to reach the fastest pace since 2008 and it will benefit from the $45 billion Chinese infrastructure investment made to tighten its economy connection with Europe through central and western Asia.
According to Ghandhara, the investments may lead to a 50% increase in truck sales, reaching 7,000 units per year by 2020. The company’s revenue is bound to grow 10% by the end of the year as a result of the increasingly growing Dongfeng sales.
Ghandhara’s stock has grown three times this year, with the truck demand and expectations that it will begin producing passenger cars in 2017. According to the local newspaper Dawn, Ghandhara is planning to start assembling Nissan Motor Co.’s Datsun cars in 2017. However, Ghandhara refused to comment on its future plans, while Nissan said no decision has been made on the Datsun production in Pakistan.