The draft Auto Policy proposes three new car booking rules in Pakistan: a 20% cap on booking advances, a price lock at the booking-date price, and registration in the actual buyer's name before a car leaves the showroom.
All three are proposals. More importantly, they are the part of the policy that needs legislation rather than a notification, which puts them further off than the headlines suggest.
What the Draft Proposes
| Provision | What is proposed |
|---|---|
| Advance cap | Maximum 20% of retail price as the initial advance |
| Price lock | Booking-date retail price applies, with a government-tax exception |
| Registration | In the actual buyer's name, before showroom release |
| Information | Clear product, warranty and after-sales details; complaint handling |
| Delivery deadline | None — no universal deadline, no fixed late compensation |
Proposed provisions from the draft policy. The wording of the tax exception comes from reporting rather than a quoted clause, and the precise scope of such an exception is exactly where a price lock can lose its force.
The 20% Advance Cap in Rupees
The cap applies to the initial advance only. The balance is still paid under whatever terms you agree, so this is not a limit on the total you pay.
| Retail price | Maximum advance |
|---|---|
| Rs 25 lakh | Rs 5 lakh |
| Rs 40 lakh | Rs 8 lakh |
| Rs 50 lakh | Rs 10 lakh |
| Rs 1 crore | Rs 20 lakh |
Illustrative arithmetic on the proposed cap, not official figures.
Why a Cap Changes Behaviour, Not Just Paperwork
Here is the part worth understanding, because it explains why a cap is the lever rather than a ban on anything.
A large advance is interest-free working capital supplied by the buyer. A manufacturer holding most of a car's price for months is being financed by its own customers at no cost.
Limit that to a fifth and most of that funding disappears. With it goes much of the incentive to take bookings far ahead of what the production line can actually deliver — which is how long queues, and the premiums that grow on them, form in the first place.
How Buyer-Name Registration Would Hit On-Money
This is the provision with real teeth, and to see why you have to look at the existing law rather than the policy.
Under the Provincial Motor Vehicles Ordinance, 1965, an “owner” is defined as the person in whose name the vehicle is registered. A vehicle cannot be driven unless registered — but vehicles held by dealers are exempt.
That exemption is the whole on-money machine. An undelivered car is registered to nobody, so a booking can change hands with no registration event, no fee, no paperwork and no record. Costless and invisible.
Now require registration in the real buyer's name before release. The first registered owner is the person who actually wanted the car.
To flip it afterwards you need a formal ownership transfer: the transferee must report within thirty days with documents and a fee, and a new certificate is issued. The plates must be dealt with too, with a Rs 100 per day penalty if they are not deposited or reassigned after sixty days.
So the proposal does not outlaw reselling a car. It converts an invisible, free flip into a recorded transaction with paperwork, fees and a trail. That is a far more realistic way to shrink the practice than banning it, though it will not eliminate it, and the source itself notes effectiveness depends on enforcement.
The Side Effect Worth Asking About
Follow that logic one step further and something awkward appears, which the draft does not address.
If the car must be registered to you before release, and the law makes the registered person the owner, then you become the legal owner before you have the car.
Three questions follow, and none has an answer yet. Who pays the registration cost, and at what point? If delivery then slips, you are the registered owner of a vehicle you do not possess. And if you change your mind, unwinding it looks less like cancelling a booking and more like transferring ownership.
These are not reasons to oppose the rule. They are the questions to put to a dealer in writing before paying an advance under it, if and when it takes effect.
What These Car Booking Rules Do Not Include
Worth being blunt, because a booking-reform story reads as though it must contain a delivery guarantee. It does not.
There is no universal delivery deadline and no fixed compensation for late delivery. Any such deadline or payment would need separate legal arrangements that do not currently exist.
What the draft does require is clear product, warranty and after-sales information, and complaint-handling mechanisms. Useful, but a complaints desk is not a delivery commitment. And nothing in it addresses refunds, so do not assume a refund right has been created.
What to Do If You Are Booking a Car Today
None of the above protects you yet, so the practical answer is to get in writing what the policy would otherwise have given you.
Ask for the price-escalation clause in writing. This is the single most important line in a booking form. Find out whether the quoted price is fixed, and if it can move, exactly what triggers that and whether there is any ceiling.
Get a delivery estimate on the document, not verbally. There is no legal deadline now and none proposed, so a written estimate is the only record you will have if the wait stretches.
Ask what happens to your advance if you cancel, and at what stage any deduction starts. The draft creates no refund right, so this remains entirely a matter of your dealer's own terms.
Confirm whose name the vehicle will be registered in and who pays for it. Doing that today, before any rule exists, costs you nothing and removes the most common source of dispute at handover.
Are These Car Booking Rules in Pakistan Final?
No. The Prime Minister approved the draft on Tuesday 20 October, and his office issued no official statement about it.
What remains, on the latest account, is federal cabinet in-principle approval and then Parliament. Another account also places an IMF review and the Economic Coordination Committee in the chain. The accounts differ, and our coverage of the IMF talks on the auto policy covers that stage.
And here is what matters most for these three rules specifically: they require legislation. A cap on what a company may collect, a duty not to raise a quoted price, and a registration-before-release requirement are legal obligations on manufacturers. They cannot come from a policy document on its own.
So of everything in this policy, the buyer-protection provisions are among the furthest from effect and the most exposed to being watered down. Nobody has new rights today. Check the final approved text and any implementing notification before relying on any of it.
Final Thoughts
These are the most genuinely pro-buyer proposals in the policy, and the registration requirement is the cleverest of them, because it works with the existing law rather than against market forces. It turns a costless flip into a traceable transfer.
But none of it is law, all of it needs legislation, there is no delivery guarantee anywhere in it, and the price lock has a tax exception whose exact wording nobody has published. In a market this large — Pakistan now has over 39 million vehicles on the road — that wording will matter more than the headline.
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