Vehicle importers express concern
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(From left) - Ranjan Peiris, Executive Committee Member / Former President; Usman Ali, Hon. Assistant Secretary; Arosha Rodrigo, Hon. Secretary; Prasad Manage, Hon. President; and Madushan Mannapperuma, Hon. Vice President.
The Vehicle Importers Association of Sri Lanka, during a media conference recently, expressed concern over some recent decisions taken by the Government.
The first issue is that the Ministry of Tourism has introduced a scheme via a cabinet decision to import 1000 number of motor vehicles for hotels and tourism which only allows a handful of franchise dealers to import.
The second issue is that the Ministry of Investment Promotion got cabinet approval to impose a zero (%) customs tariff on the CIF value to import electric vehicles or Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) in semi-knockdown (SKD) form for local assembly.
However, there is no value addition required on these vehicles in the first two years, which is designed to benefit a single company (Western Automobile formerly known as – Senok Automobile Assembly Pvt LTD) which claims to have fulfilled these requirements via investments made back in 2021. The scheme to import 1000 number of motor vehicles to hotels involved in the tourism sector completely restricts all the parallel importers in the country from importing, only allowing a small number of franchise holders to totally benefit from this. Vehicles imported by brand-new franchise dealers are more expensive compared to the import of new vehicles by parallel importers who have sources to purchase vehicles used for demonstration or display purposes etc, at discounts exceeding 20 per cent below the original price, the association said. Furthermore, parallel importers have the ability and flexibility to supply leading brands on an immediate basis hence importing vehicles into the country within 1-2 months as opposed to brand new agents whose lead time is around 6-8 months.
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