John Deere to Establish Plant in Pakistan


Pakistan Federal Minister for Industries and Production, Mr. Liaquat Ali Jatoi has said that the Government of Pakistan is following a policy of Liberalization of the industrial sector through rationalization of Tariffs for ensuring the conducive environment in the country.
The development of a strong and dynamic industrial sector in Pakistan is the top most priority of the present Government. He was talking to a three- members delegation of John Deere Asia Limited led by Wayne A. Haughton, Managing Director of the Company which met to the Minister in Islamabad on Tuesday.

John Deere is a U.S. based international leading manufacturers of Tractors, which is interested to establish a plant in Pakistan for locally assembling of Tractors. The Managing director of the company informed the minister that his company has a vast experience in manufacturing of tractors and they are interested to invest in Pakistan. He also offered that his Company is ready to provide technical assistance to government of Pakistan in Agriculture sector. The Minister welcomed the delegation and said that the Government of Pakistan intends to provide all out facilities in the foreign investors. Incentives in this respect would also be granted to them so that the foreign investors could be encouraged to invest in Pakistan, the Minister added.

The Minister underlined the importance of the Agriculture sector in the country and said that Agriculture sector is a backbone of our economy and Government of Pakistan would provide latest and sophisticated machinery and equipment to the farmers so that they could compete international market.

Tractor assemblers to reap benefit

By Rizwan Razi

LAHORE: The government’s decision to allow duty free import of 10,000 tractors would help the local tractor assemblers to earn around one billion rupees.

While tabling the budget proposals for year 2005-2006, the Minister of State for Finance, Omer Ayub Khan announced duty free import of 10,000 tractors for the domestic tractor assemblers so they can sell them in the commercial market to create an acceptance of their products.

Subsequently they would start their actual production in due course to cater to the domestic market.

Omer Ayub said that tractor assemblers rolled out about 31,000 tractors during the current financial year ending June 30, 2005.

However, he pointed out that following the availability of low priced financing from domestic financial institutions, the local tractor assemblers were not able to meet the rising demand of tractors from the agriculture sector.

Local auto sector players said that two new tractor assemblers, who are about to start their assembling operations near the provincial metropolis, might be the major beneficiaries of this concession.

Market sources said that currently, commercial importers are earning Rs60,000 to Rs90,000 while the import tariff impact is around 30,000 per unit. According to a conservative estimate, the financial impact of each unit would be around 100,000 per unit.

Therefore, an assembling unit would be pocketing at least Rs250 million without even investing a single penny in its domestic assembling capability.