Sri Lankans save 8% on Japanese cars due to Yen devaluation
View(s):The recent devaluation of the Japanese Yen has yielded about a 8 per cent savings on cars brought into Sri Lanka from that country, according to Rukshan Tissera, Director of Cars@Duplication. Adding to this, he said that the latest, 2015 national budget has provided for an almost 40 per cent duty reduction additionally for some vehicles, so it was an opportune time to buy. He also indicated that the price of the Honda Vezel car, which was gaining in popularity in Sri Lanka, had dropped by Rs. 500,000 in terms of tax alone.
Mr. Tissera’s comments were made at the recent revamping of the Sri Lankan version of Carmudi, an online motor vehicle listing website. The local website has been re-launched in line with similar developments in the 17 other countries in which the company presently operates.
Since launching in Sri Lanka in 2013, the website has listed more than 3,000 motor vehicles, via 100 dealers, wth thousands of potential buyers visiting it on a daily basis.
One new feature of the re-launched website is that it now allows potential sellers to list their vehicles in less than two minutes, even if the Internet connection used is a slow one. This is because it has been shown that many users tend to opt out of the process of uploading their vehicle’s details if it takes too long, according to a Carmudi representative.
Another change to the website design is more space for advertising, which is likely to benefit Carmudi directly, resulting in increased revenues for its local operation.
Meanwhile, it also emerged that Carmudi plans to add a Finance Calculator to the website in the future. Per a company representative, this was still some ways off though it was something Sri Lanka sorely needed. Currently, for the best deal in financing the purchase of a car, one had to directly approach each finance company on an individual, one-by-one basis, and compare the deals they offered.
(JH)