KARACHI, June 30: Consumers will witness some new arrivals of cars and jeeps (both imported and locally assembled) in the next one year. Sigma Motors has planned to introduce United Kingdom's Land Rover 4x4 range of vehicles in August at a price ranging Rs2.1-2.3 million.

The company is already assembling Land Rover Defender in Karachi under a contract with the director general military procurement, ministry of defence. Six different variants of the vehicles are already in use in all the regions of Pakistan.

"Ghandhara Nissan's car plant at the Port Qasim has been selected for assembling Defender's civilian version under technical collaboration with Land Rover UK," Sigma Motors general manager marketing Adil Mohiuddin told Dawn on Wednesday.

He said the vehicles would be assembled under an approved deletion of 40 per cent by the Engineering Development Board. It could not be known how much the company has invested in the new setup, besides targets of monthly or yearly production. However, the official said the joint venture would create around 1,000 direct and indirect jobs.

"The company intends to introduce the vehicles both in soft as well as in hard top (three door/five door station wagon with aluminium body)," he added. The market is also expected to see locally assembled Chevrolet cars next year through a joint collaboration with a local company Nexus Automotive and Saudi Balubaid. As many as 900 vehicles has already been imported by Nexus to get the domestic market response.

Many local assemblers like Indus Motors and Dewan Motors have also become distributors of Japanese and German vehicles. A cut in import duty will further encourage these companies to bring more vehicles in Pakistan.

Indus Motors last year brought Prado Jeep and Aventis car at the price of Rs5.4 million and Rs4.9 million, respectively. Auto sector sources said that with the reduction in import duty in the budget 2004-05, the price of such vehicles would fall by Rs500,000-600,000.

An official at Indus Motors says the company this year has not brought any vehicles and is waiting for the announcement of the trade policy 2004-05. "The government may further allow import of new makes and models in the policy," he adds.

"The assemblers are engaged in distribution business, besides continuing with the assembly of local cars and vehicles. There is no government restriction on the assemblers who become distributors," an official at another car assembling company said.

At a time when competition is bound to become more stiffening with the implementation of WTO obligation from 2005, the local car producers, after smelling the changing market scenario, are shifting their interest towards distribution business to import costly vehicles that have very limited buyers.

Dewan Motors earlier this year imported Germany's BMW at the price ranging Rs5-10 million depending on models. The duty cut by the government has injected a ray of hope among the assemblers to further boost their distribution business and many other assemblers are likely to follow suit.