All-new Aruz waiting period reduced

KUALA LUMPUR: Good news, for all eyeing on the new Perodua Aruz. According to a recent report from the company, the waiting period has been reduced from 2-2.5 months to 1 to 1.5 months. The reduction has been made possible due to the increase in the car’s production.

Datuk Zainal Abidin Ahmad, Perodua President, and CEO, said that the automaker was able to improve the car’s production capacity to achieve the shorter waiting period. He said, “We continue to focus on quality and delivery as our customers come first. We thank you for your continued and strong support, which has led to the Aruz being the most popular SUV in Malaysia – this is truly an important milestone for us.”

The national automaker estimates the January to July sales to be around 140,900 units, that is on par with the sales figure of the same period last year. Of course, last year’s sales figure hiked due to the unprecedented 3-month tax holiday. A total of 17,989 units of Aruz have been sold from year to date.

Zainal Abidin said that “In terms of comparison, the months of June, July, and August last year saw a tax holiday resulting from the elimination of the GST by the government. Notwithstanding the circumstance, we are fortunate that our performance so far is comparable to the tax holiday impact.’

It was only last month that Perodua revised its sales target for 2019 to 235,000 units, i.e., 4000 more than the original target. The new sales target is 3.4 percent more compared to last year when the automaker sold 227,234 units.

Apart from increasing the sales target, Perodua has also revised the production target for 2019. It is now up by 2.9 percent - from the original 243,000 units to 249,000 units. The company further claims that both its Sg Choh plants are currently operating at 97 percent capacity. Last year, the PMMGB plant capacity was 94.6 percent, and that of PMSB was 96.2 percent. Also, defects per units at both the Perodua plants have steadily declined.