Honda Malaysia will continue to maintain prices of its existing models for 2023, despite severe inflationary pressure affecting the entire industry.

“For the moment, we are striving to maintain our current position. As of now, we are trying to do as much as possible to fight the increasing cost that we are facing right now,” said Yujiro Sugino, Executive Coordinator at Honda Malaysia, at a media event on Friday evening.

This comes after chief rival UMW Toyota Motor raised prices of its core Toyota Corolla Cross and Hilux models by around RM 2k and RM 3k respectively in January this year. Other models like the Toyota Corolla Altis, Camry, and Fortuner went up by around RM 4k, RM 10k, and RM 5k respectively.

Prices of the AC100 generation 2023 Toyota Vios (to be launched tonight) is also estimated to go up by around RM 5k. Estimated prices of the 1.5E and 1.5G variants are RM 90k and RM 96k respectively.

Honda Malaysia trades mostly in US Dollars, for parts sourced from Thailand (the location of the company’s ‘mother plant’ for this region) and other regional countries. Parts sourced from Japan are done in Japanese Yen.

Honda Malaysia is forecasting a lower sales volume of 80,000 units this year (it did 80,290 units in 2022), in tandem with the 10 percent contraction in total industry volume forecasted by the Malaysia Automotive Association. The reduced sales volume is due to the expiry of Penjana sales tax exemption.

Despite the lower forecasted sales volume, Honda Malaysia is confident that its 4 new upcoming new model launches, including a new small SUV positioned below the HR-V (the A-segment 1.5L Honda WR-V), will boost its market share from 11.1 percent to 12.3 percent this year.