Nadaleen Singh

Pres­i­dent of the Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Philip Knag­gs says the as­so­ci­a­tion was not con­sult­ed on the de­ci­sion to in­crease Cus­toms and Ex­cise du­ties on cars which are over 2,499 cc.He said the in­crease could have reper­cus­sions on ship­ments which were on the way to T&T."It would have been great if the Gov­ern­ment would have seen fit to give us some con­sul­ta­tion be­fore hand," Knag­gs said yes­ter­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view.Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day: "In re­spect of the im­por­ta­tion of new and for­eign used cars over 2,499 cc, I pro­pose to in­crease cus­toms du­ty by 25.0 per cent with ef­fect from Oc­to­ber 1, 2013 on new and for­eign used cars over 2,499 cc, ex­clud­ing T-ve­hi­cles and ve­hi­cles reg­is­tered for use as maxi-taxis."

Com­ment­ing on when the in­crease is ex­pect­ed to take ef­fect, Knag­gs said he was not pleased."The prob­lem we have is that we have ve­hi­cles on the wa­ter that we or­dered and haven't ar­rived yet. We have ve­hi­cles that we have put in­to pro­duc­tion. We have a lot of these com­mit­ments to ho­n­our from our man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers."He said the as­so­ci­a­tion felt it would be bet­ter if the ef­fects of the new tax in­crease would come in­to ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1 rather than Oc­to­ber 1.Knag­gs said this would al­low car deal­ers the chance to clear out their in­ven­to­ries and fol­low through with their com­mit­ments to man­u­fac­tur­ers, sup­pli­ers and cus­tomers who had or­dered ve­hi­cles.He said the as­so­ci­a­tion planned to write to the min­is­ter to ex­press its views.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the T&T Used Car Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Visham Bab­wah said for­eign used car deal­ers are not wor­ried about the 20 per cent in­crease in tax for ve­hi­cles over 2500 cc as an­nounced by the min­is­ter. Bab­wah al­so spoke dur­ing a news con­fer­ence af­ter the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.He said: "This will not ad­verse­ly af­fect the for­eign used cars be­cause 90 per cent of the cars im­port­ed are un­der 2,500 cc. The big sell­ers are cars with 1500 cc en­gines."Like Knag­gs, Bab­wah al­so said the de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment this tax from Oc­to­ber 1 was not fair be­cause deal­ers had cars on or­der that were sold at an agreed price."They should have im­ple­ment­ed this on Jan­u­ary 1, 2014 to give us enough time and to be fair to con­sumers."