Ministry Sec. denies: Individual vehicle importers barred from Finance Ministry

The newly formed individual vehicle importers, who were affected due to the recent tax increase said yesterday that they were barred from entering the Finance Ministry office over any vehicle importation related issues by Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake since June 17.

However, the Finance Ministry Media Secretary Sisira Wijesinghe contradicted the allegations and said the individual importers had imported the vehicles even though they were aware of the tax increase. He also denied the claim about barring the importers from meeting the Minister.

He said that the increase of vehicle tax had been taken after a Cabinet decision and it cannot be changed.

“Many people think the Minister can make changes if they meet him in person. Even the decision on Customs Act cannot be changed by the Minister".

The Collectives President Sujeewa Perera said their association had discussed the issues relating to the release of their individually imported vehicles with the Finance Minister.

“The tax had not been increased only by this Government, but several times during the previous regime as well. The minister had never barred anyone entering the Ministry to discuss any issues with the Minister.

“People can meet the Minister during his public day. Other than that, in case of emergency, relevant Ministry Consultant can be contacted and can make an appointment with the Minister.

“We request the President and the Finance Minister to look into our matter in a reasonable manner and provide us a relief by releasing our vehicles. There are nearly 50 vehicles with the Customs. During the previous regime the relief had been given five times to the people,” he said.

“Before that we have informed President Maithripala Sirisena to provide us concessionary relief to the vehicles. The President had agreed to provide us relief and issued a letter to the Finance Minister to do the needful. But the Finance Minister didn’t even consider the President’s letter and ignored it. He even prevented us entering to premises to discuss any vehicle issues,” he said.

“Not considering the Presidents letter is an insult to the President,” Mr. Perera said.

The Government increased the import duties on several categories of vehicles since March 26.

“We have opened Letters of Credit (LC) to import vehicles before March 27 with the assurance of releasing vehicles under the previous tax and also may have obtained maximum bank loans to support the purchase of these vehicles.

“The new duty is unbearable. We have to pay more than Rs.4 million to release our vehicles from the Customs,” he said.

“There are 200 vehicles to be released by the customs but the people who were able to pay Rs.200,000 or Rs.300,00 were released.

“About 50 vehicles such as Toyota Prius, Mitsubishi Outlander and Nissan X-Trail are still being kept at the Customs. Those vehicles were at the Customs vehicles yard for more than three months and now we have to pay demurrage of nearly Rs.500,000 in addition to the duties. Most of the individual importers had received the letters from Customs saying that the Customs had decided to auction them,” he said. (Chaturanga Pradeep)

Video by Sanath Desmond