21 July 2018 11:16 am
VIASL Chairman Ranjan Peiris told the media that as a leading association, it was thankful to the government over the step it had taken to introduce the Euro Four Emission standards while turning a new page on vehicle imports.
“This move will help protect the environment. Also, we would request the government to put our vehicle imports under the brand new category as the government used to label us as used vehicle importers though we import brand new vehicles. We are the oldest association in the country which imports brand new vehicles as well as used vehicles. Most of the vehicles we import are brand new with zero mileage,” he said.
According to the rules and regulation of the vehicle manufacturing countries such as Japan, the association would have to register and de-register zero mileage vehicles before exporting.
“Though the vehicles are in zero mileage our government consider them as used vehicles,” he said.
Also, he said the Association is willing to request the Finance Ministry to introduce a separate method to calculate customs duty over used vehicles when importing. “This could be included in the budget 2019,” he said.
Presently, all brand new and used vehicles get the same tax calculation based on the engine capacity and there should have to be a way to calculate separate taxes, Mr. Peiris said. (Chaturanga Samarawickrama)