Local car-making fiscal support unchanged despite sales slump
THE government has no immediate plans to revise a fiscal support program for automotive companies investing in local production after industry sales slumped due to the pandemic.
Toyota Motor Philippines Corp. and Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corp. are participating in the Comprehensive Automotive Resurgence Strategy (CARS) program, which offers fiscal support to car companies that locally produce 200,000 units of high-volume car models for six years.
Trade Undersecretary Ceferino S. Rodolfo in a recent online press briefing said that he does not think the participating companies will be able to reach the required volume of vehicles.
“So ‘yung kanilang variable incentive, di nila makukuha siguro ‘yun (So I don’t think they will be able to get their variable incentives),” he said.
Automotive companies like Toyota stopped production in March to comply with lockdown restrictions, restarting some operations only in mid-May.
Industry sales started to recover in May after sales plummeted 99.5% to 133 units in April from 25,799 in the same month last year. The industry sold 4,788 units in May, which is still 85% lower than the 30,998 in May 2019.
Mr. Rodolfo said there were no talks about revising the CARS program targets.
“So far, walang ganung usapan, even nung nakikita namin nahirapan ‘yung iba dahil for whatever reason na sinasabi nila. (So far, there are no talks [of revising targets] even though we saw some of them are having a hard time for whatever reason they’re saying).”
Possible revisions would be time extensions on producing the volume target, but the target will remain the same.
“Sa ngayon wala pa, siguro darating din ‘yan but now wala pa (For now there won’t be revisions. Maybe it will come, but for now not yet).”
In the meantime, Mr. Rodolfo said they were looking at repositioning bicycle manufacturing exporters for the domestic market.
“‘Yung domestic market natin, kung lalakas ‘yung demand, pwede tayo kumbaga market repositioning more towards the domestic. (If demand spikes, we could reposition to the domestic market).” — Jenina P. Ibañez
