Perodua has over 200,000 bookings in hand and aims to fulfil the outstanding orders by Q1 2023. Doing so would meet the registration deadline for SST exemption, which is March 31, 2023, provided the bookings were made before July 1. The end of the SST booking period saw a mad rush at car showrooms, and Perodua collected 25,100 bookings on June 30, a daily record.

President and CEO Datuk Zainal Abidin Ahmad told the media last week that Perodua is capable of producing 28,000 units a month, and with that production level, it should be able to fulfil the outstanding orders in time for customers to enjoy SST savings.

With this, the P2 chief is confident that the 2022 sales target of 247,800 units (a 30.2% increase from the 190,291 vehicles delivered in 2021) can be achieved, aided by the fact that the company has resolved the chip shortage issue, The Edge reports.

As for inflation, the weakening ringgit and rising costs for manufacturers, Perodua says that it will maintain prices.

“There are a lot of factors that need to be considered, from the price of raw materials, Malaysia’s economic conditions, to customers’ purchasing power. [There will be] no price increase; we are still maintaining our price and hopefully we should be able to maintain our price until the end of this year,” Zainal said.

“So far, any cost increase that we face, we should be able to absorb,” he added, while saying that the group has cost reduction measures in place to cushion the impact.

Of course, the price increase mentioned here is not the price revision with sales tax added back on – those are taxes payable to the government. As of July 1, prices of Perodua cars have gone up by between RM723 and RM4,674, or between 1.63% and 6.38%. As for what’s next, the all-new Alza is just around the corner now.