Assembling cars domestically is now the top priority.

Toyota may resume the assembly of Fortuner in the third quarter this year after two years of importing products for domestic sale. The current generation Fortuner was marketed in January 2017, imported from Indonesia.

Toyota changed its business strategy twice within five years, rarely seen in the automobile industry.

In general, assembling and import plans must be considered two to three years before implementation, because it takes time to survey markets and prepare financial and material conditions. One plan will be implemented for a period of no less than five years.

In 2018, the Japanese automobile manufacturer had problems because of regulations stipulated in Decree 116 on car imports. As a result, the market was always in short supply of Fortuners.

Toyota and other manufacturers now can satisfy the requirements stipulated in the decree, but this is not enough to ensure that imports can be sold in Vietnam in the next few years.

The sales director of a Japanese company said the government has shown its determination to support local production and restrict imports. Most recently, the Ministry of Finance proposed to exempt the luxury tax on car parts made in Vietnam.

In such conditions, importing cars from ASEAN to sell domestically is longer an optimal solution. In fact, the sales director said, automobile joint ventures want to assemble cars in Vietnam.

In principle, automobile manufacturers only assemble models that sell well in Vietnam. That is why Toyota stopped assembling Camry and reserved the assembly line for Fortuner.

Importing cars for domestic sale and then assembling the models if the sales are satisfactory is the preferred method.

If 10,000 Xpander products can be sold each year, the holding company in Japan would permit assembly of the model in Vietnam. A source said Mitsubishi would assemble Xpander in Vietnam in the time to come, but is still unclear about the date.

Prior to that, Mitsubishi also shifted from importing Outlander to assembling the model in Vietnam. 

An analyst said big automobile manufacturers thought that importing cars would be preferable in the context of the import tariff cut to zero percent in 2018. However, policies pursued by Vietnam do not support this.

Some sources say Honda is also considering assembling CR-V again in Vietnam.

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Tran Thuy