Press Statement
by Lim Guan Eng

(Petaling Jaya, Thursday): The government must explain how the NAP will benefit Malaysians especially in reducing prices of foreign as well as national cars. DAP agrees with Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi that national carmaker Proton will have to reduce prices not only to increase market share locally and overseas but also to compete to counter  foreign competition.

However many Malaysians are puzzled by Malaysian Automotive Association (MAA), president Datuk Aishah Ahmad and Malay Automobile Importers and Distributors of Malaysia (Pekema) Datuk Abdul Hamid Ibrahim comments that car prices are not expected to come down. He even said that “There will be slight adjustments to the prices: they will either remain or go up a little bit, but they will not go down”.

That car prices will not go down but may even go up is both unacceptable and shocking when the NAP is supposed to make cars cheaper by reducing excise duties on foreign cars and import duties for ASEAN-made cars. Should car prices not go down, then the government must explain how the NAP would benefit Malaysians, whether car prices would go down, by how much and why the prices are not going down much more.

Another important issue is the need to reduce the prices of our national cars sold locally to the level of the prices sold overseas. Prices of national sold overseas can be cheaper by RM 10,000, which means that Malaysian taxpayers money are used to subsidise foreigners who purchase the national cars. Isn’t it ironical that we are still subsidizing foreign purchasers of national cars when we are cutting down fuel subsidies.

Whilst Proton may explain that lowering prices is necessary to help push up the sales of Malaysians cars to the tough foreign car market, the time has come for us to benefit directly from producing our national cars by paying lower or at least equivalent prices sold overseas. In releasing its Key Performance Index yesterday, Proton has declared the target of its local market share from 41.4% last year to 45.8% this year and its export sales to total revenue from 5.2%  to 8.2%.

Such goals are unrealistic when Proton can not even arrest its declining local market share from a high of 61% in 2002 to 41% in 2005. Proton should concentrate on winning back its local market share by following the Prime Minister’s advice in reducing car prices locally. DAP would release a more detailed response to the NAP when the impact of the reductions in excise and import duties are calculated over the next few days.

(23/03/2006)