Buying a car in Pakistan was not all that complicated. You like a car, you went to the showroom, you provided your tax details, you filled up the documents and provided the payment draft and the car was yours. It took hardly a couple of days to complete all formalities.
Now a days we have a new business called the ON MONEY BUSINESS which has brought the auto sales business to it’s knees. What is ON MONEY? So On Money is the additional payment, over and above the price of the car, which one has to pay in order to get the delivery of the car immediately. If you do not agree to pay the ON MONEY then you can still buy the car but the delivery time may vary any where from 3 months to 6 months. This is true for all models and makes including Honda, Toyota, Suzuki, KIA, Hyundai. Buyers are crying fowl as they are not getting timely delivery of their vehicles, in spite of making whole payments.
So how does this actually works? The car dealers along with shady investors make advance booking of cars and horde them. This creates an artificial shortage of cars in the market. They then demand ON MONEY from genuine car buyers up front.
So is this legal? It is not. The government came up with the unique idea of restricting all buyers of cars from reselling their cars for a period of one year after the purchase. This was an innovative measure and soon the automobile market stabilised. But as it happens the government seeing the success of this reduced the reselling period from one year to only two months with an additional tax of Rs. 60,000. This was done too please the shady investors who do not want to show their source of funds.
So we are back to square one. Now we see that a car is booked on paper only. Advance negotiations are completed with genuine buyers in which the car will eventually be released on their names if they agree to pay the ON MONEY + Rs. 60,000 additional tax in order to get the car delivered to them immediately.
Automobile Dealers in Pakistan are part and parcel of this crime and it is happening under the nose of the government but no one seems bothered.
