Good news for Indian luxury car aficionados as premium imported vehicles may become cheaper in the coming days. Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Praful Patel on Monday gave a hint that his ministry is willing to accept concession in duties on luxury cars imported from Europe as part of India-EU Trade Agreement, as reported by PTI.
Patel talking to reporters on the sidelines of SIAM's summit on diesel technology in New Delhi said, “The India-EU FTA has to be concluded at some future date, of course it cannot be open ended. We also export a lot of smaller vehicles into the EU and we would like to continue to do that and increase that volume"
The auto industry in the country under the aegis of SIAM has been against giving out any relaxations on import of vehicles from Europe. The auto industry believes that giving relaxations will discourage investments in the country and that may affect job creations also.
Patel further added, "We also need to arrive at some kind of, say, mutually agreeable formula, where EU's some concerns on larger vehicles can be addressed." However, he also made it clear that India "has not changed its stand at the moment". When asked, how much duty concessions could be given on the imports of luxury car from Europe, he said that the government had not yet decided on this.
During 2012-13 budget, there was a 15 per cent hike in the customs duty from 60 per cent to 75 per cent for completely imported vehicles priced higher than USD 40,000 and with engine capacity over 3,000cc for petrol vehicles and 2,500 cc for diesel powered vehicles.
Though no decision has been taken yet on cutting the import duty on luxury vehicles, it can be expected that the good news for the Indian buyers may come soon. Once the import duty is cut, the luxury vehicles that come as completely built units (CBU) from Europe will become cheaper and more people who dream of a luxury car can own it.
