The state-owned Pragati Industries Limited is planning to assemble Pajero Sports, a new model sports utility vehicle (SUV) of the Mitsubishi, shortly, officials said Tuesday.
Recently, a technical and commercial team from Mitsubishi visited the Pragati plant in Chittagong and met its high officials in Dhaka.
“The visiting team has been pleased seeing our facility and we expect to assemble this shortly,” said Zahiruddin Chowdhury, managing director of the Pragati Industries Limited.
Mitsubishi, Japanese automaker, introduced the SUV a few years back and is now marketing it in different parts of the world.
The new model SUV is a seven-seater with 2500 cc engine capacity. It is also equipped with other modern facilities.
Quoting Asia commercial chief of Mitsubishi Kazuhaita Ogata, Mr Zahir said the team is highly pleased with the Pragati infrastructure.
Currently, Pragati assembles Pajero G-31, a nine-seater with 2350 cc engine capacity.
It assembled 446 Pajero G-31s in the last fiscal and it might assemble 500 vehicles in the current fiscal year, according to sources.
The sources said the Mitsubishi will provide some technical support from its plant located in Thailand.
The Pragati chief said: “We’ve asked the visiting team to introduce octane system converting the diesel system to have a good market in the country.”
Mr Zahir said they are yet to complete negotiation on the prices of the parts of the new model saying “We will finish it in the next meeting later this month or in the first week of the September when another team will visit Bangladesh.”
The prices of such SUVs will come down if those are assembled locally, Pragati officials said.
The government has taken this move to revamp the state-owned automobile company, which had for many years been struggling to survive.
Mitsubishi, the Japanese automobile company, has an agreement to assemble Pajero with state-owned Pragati since 1998.
Pragati, formerly known as Gandhara, had launched its operation for assembling motorised vehicles by importing CKD (completely knocked down) parts in 1966.
It first started assembling Vauxhall cars of General Motors but after the independence of Bangladesh the work stopped.
During the 1980s, it assembled Maruti cars in a limited scale.
“We cannot be cost-effective if we produce a limited number of cars,” Zahir added.
source:http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2009/08/14/76075.html
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