JEDDAH, 9 August — A top Korean automobile executive has welcomed the steep cut in import duty from 12 to five percent and said the move would create more business opportunities Kingdomwide.

“However, such a step will not expand the actual automobile market volume which remains normal in the vicinity of 20,000 units per year,” Sung-Do Park, senior executive vice president of KIA Motors said in an interview.

According to him, KIA together with Hyundai, has set itself the goal of being in the first five top vehicle manufacturers in the world by 2010.

“Hyundai and KIA produce about three million units per year when the total units produced worldwide range between 60 million and 70 million. Thus our share is about six percent and we’re considered as the sixth vehicle producer worldwide. We’re working hard to rank higher in the future,” Park said.

He added: “KIA in cooperation with its strategic associate Hyundai are planning to produce a sports car enabling them to strongly compete in the international rallies by 2004.”

Accompanied by Dong-Kwan Kim, director of regional headquarters for the Middle East operations, Park visited KIA’s Kingdomwide agent Haji Husein Alireza & Co. Ltd. (HHA) in Jeddah recently during his visit to the Kingdom.

He emphasized that his visit, which he had been making year after year, was to reassure and extend full support to the local agent and study KIA’s position in the ever-expanding automobile market in the Kingdom, “one of the most important for us in the Middle East region.”

About the relationship between KIA and HHA, Park said: “It’s successful in all respects, and we’re supporting them in every possible manner to further strengthen it.”

About KIA’s association with Hyundai, Park said: “In general KIA Motors is a member of Hyundai Group and we cooperate with each other in order to reduce production costs. Hyundai has 14 production lines and KIA has 10 others, and we’re planning to merge them into just seven production lines by 2005. We then propose to produce seven to eight models on each line.

Thus we’ll be able to overcome competition and face the market more effectively.” Park added: “Our sharing of the production lines will ultimately result in reducing costs in developing products and we’ll have the option of selecting strong suppliers as well. We’ll then be able to further enhance the quality of our vehicles. Consequently, our distributors will get vehicles of high quality and meet local market requirements at competitive rates.”