Pres­i­dent of the Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ADATT) Ryan Latchu says feels “en­cour­aged” by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment of the Gov­ern­ment's promise to waive tax­es and cus­toms du­ty on im­port­ed hy­brid mo­tor ve­hi­cles.

Af­ter an­nounc­ing an ad­just­ment in fu­el prices ef­fec­tive April 19, Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment will waive tax­es and cus­toms du­ty on im­port­ed hy­brid mo­tor ve­hi­cles.

Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing steps to en­cour­age cit­i­zens to con­serve fu­el, in­clud­ing a new ex­emp­tion for hy­brid cars. He said this ex­emp­tion will take ef­fect be­tween the be­gin­ning and mid­dle of May 2022.

“These tax con­ces­sions will be de­signed to cater to typ­i­cal car own­ers and will not be avail­able for own­ers or im­porters of high-end lux­u­ry hy­brid cars. For ex­am­ple, a typ­i­cal hy­brid car that will fall in­to this new cat­e­go­ry of tax ex­emp­tion would have an en­gine size not ex­ceed­ing 1600 cc, an elec­tric mo­tor gen­er­at­ing 45 kW, to­tal pow­er out­put in the vicin­i­ty of 78 kW and would not be more than three years old,” Im­bert said.

In a state­ment to the Sun­day Guardian, Latchu said, “There is a ma­te­r­i­al ben­e­fit to the mo­tor­ing pub­lic in both the new and used ve­hi­cle in­dus­tries from this ini­tia­tive, es­pe­cial­ly in light of the in­crease in fu­el prices from April 19. We are hope­ful that as key stake­hold­ers, we will be con­sult­ed be­fore the ac­tu­al leg­is­la­tion is draft­ed and ap­proved for roll­out. Hy­brid ve­hi­cle op­tions are read­i­ly avail­able by most au­to­mo­tive brands rep­re­sent­ed lo­cal­ly and a more sus­tain­able op­tion in the present as we pre­pare the na­tion for EV mo­bil­i­ty in the near fu­ture."

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) Visham Bab­wah ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of mis­lead­ing the pop­u­la­tion on the is­sue.

“This is hood­wink­ing the pop­u­la­tion. They said they will im­ple­ment the ex­emp­tion in May but what they have done is the way they have cat­e­gorised it. Usu­al­ly, when you are giv­en an ex­emp­tion on a hy­brid ve­hi­cle you give the ex­emp­tion based on the age­ing ca­pac­i­ty, the cc ca­pac­i­ty of the gaso­line en­gine.

"What he has said this time is go­ing on the en­gine ca­pac­i­ty and the mo­tor kilo­watt. This rep­re­sents elec­tric pow­er. This is to­tal­ly mis­lead­ing.”

He said for the elec­tri­cal ca­pac­i­ty of a car like a Toy­ota Aqua, which is the small­est can that can be im­port­ed, its elec­tri­cal part has a ca­pac­i­ty of kilo­watt which is much high­er than what the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said.

The Toy­ota Aqua is a full hy­brid, gaso­line-elec­tric car.

“What he has done is to throw out some fig­ures on ca­pac­i­ty, but we can­not get ve­hi­cles that con­form to that ca­pac­i­ty. There is no ve­hi­cle that we can get with that com­bined kilo­watt that he spoke about. He is con­fus­ing the pop­u­la­tion. Cit­i­zens are think­ing that they will get ex­emp­tion up to 1600 cc, the prob­lem is that we can’t get any ve­hi­cles in that cat­e­go­ry. Even if they get a few very small ve­hi­cles, a three-year-old ve­hi­cle would be cost­ly.”