Massive e-vehicle racket comes to light after 119 luxury car imports

By Bandula Sirimanna

A massive electric vehicle import racket has been exposed by the Parliamentary Committee on Ways and Means revealing startling details on misusing the facility given to migrant workers, official sources revealed.     

Chairman of the Committee Patalee Champika Ranawake said that 119 luxury electric vehicles worth Rs1.2 billion had been imported into the country misusing the migrant workers vehicle scheme.

Of this 75 such vehicles had been brought in to the country by a single company, he disclosed without naming the importer.

These vehicles have been imported by using the licence to import electric cars by several vendors and sold it in the local market fraudulently, he claimed.

The committee has issued a directive to relevant authorities to immediately take action against perpetrators including corrupt state officials.

It will issue guidelines to the finance and labour ministries to properly implement the incentive scheme for migrant employees to import a two-wheeled electric vehicle valued up to US$25,000 and a four-wheeled fully electric vehicle valued up to $65,000.

The Business Times exclusively reported on June 11, 2023 quoting, several leading motor traders as stating that vehicles import scheme for migrant workers has turned into a racket by some unscrupulous vehicle importers in hand in glove with corrupt officials.

The global manufacturers and authorised representatives were consulted to formulate a sustainable roll out of Electric Vehicles to Sri Lanka considering the missteps of the past and failures of over 5,000 Nissan leaf vehicles which were imported against manufacturer recommendations.

This proposal was accepted and the first circular [MFE/DEV/HOB/03/ vol ii] was issued on 31st August 2022 by the Ministry of Labour and Foreign Employment Circular No; 02/2022).

However nine days later, this was suddenly reversed in a circular No; 02/2022 dated September 9 2022.

In this new circular, the manufacturer warranty of three years was changed to a 3rd party warranty. Manufacturer recommendations of suitability to a country or region were completely ignored.

The electric vehicles are being imported by unauthorised parties totally against manufacturer recommendations, they pointed out.

The earlier wording limited the vehicle CIF value to a maximum of US $65,000 which still allowed vehicles from medium to luxury categories to be imported.

However, the altered circular has eliminated the maximum limit on the CIF which now enables ultra-luxury vehicles to be imported, they claimed.

Such a change supported by the other alterations on the latest circular, clearly enables the ultra-rich living in Sri Lanka to import electric vehicles for their personal usage utilising the migrant worker scheme, motor traders charged at that time.