Honda to hike production of best-selling City

MANILA, Philippines - Honda Cars Philippines Inc. (HCPI) is ramping up the local production of its City model, which now makes up “more than half” of its total sales.

During the launch of its fourth generation CR-V model yesterday, HCPI president and general manager Tatsuya Natsume said production of the City in its production plant in Laguna resumed in February.

“Production (of City model) has started already in February. We are now increasing production. We currently have a daily production capacity of 40 units. So monthly we can supply around 900 units,” he said.

HCPI suspended its local production in November because of limitations in parts supply caused by the flooding in Thailand. In early January it announced that is resuming local assembly.

Honda assembles and distributes variants of the City, Jazz, Civic, Accord and the CR-V sport utility vehicle models. As of March, Honda was able to sell1, 631 units.

In February, it launched the 2012 model of Civic but the units sold were imported from Japan.

Natsume said HCPI still has no plans of resuming the assembly of Civic variants because it would be concentrating on the production of City variants.

“When we launched the City model, sales are higher for City than Civic so we dedicate our production to City. City retailed twice as much as last year so we concentrate our production in City,” he said.

Natsume also said that Honda’s production plant in Thailand has resumed operation last March 26 and would supply the Philippine market as soon as it is prepared to do so.

With the resumption of parts supply from Thailand, unit prices are expected to be lower.

“Some adjustments will be made. Of course imported models from Japan are subject to 20 percent tariff. We didn’t charge everything to our customers, though,” said Natsume.

The new CR-Vs sold in the Philippines, meanwhile are imported from Japan.

“For now it comes from Japan, but once Thailand is ready to supply to the Philippines, we will shift the supply from Thailand,” Natsume said.

Yusihi Fukuda, general manager of the automotive business division of Asian Honda Motor Company Limited said they continue to be optimistic for the Philippine automotive industry.

“The economy of the Philippines is improving and we believe the automotive sector stands to benefit from this. Honda Cars Asia is committed to support the growth of the auto industry,” he said.