Government restores tax exemptions for mild hybrid vehicles

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Car deal­ers im­port­ing mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles will con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from tax ex­emp­tions af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo in­ter­vened, re­vers­ing a Cus­toms re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion that had sparked con­cern over the prospect of sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er ve­hi­cle prices.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) pres­i­dent Visham Bab­wah wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to main­tain the tax ex­emp­tions fol­low­ing days of dis­cus­sions with Min­is­ter Tan­coo and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

Bab­wah said the res­o­lu­tion came af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion pre­sent­ed a strong case against the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of cer­tain mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles.

He ex­plained that while Cus­toms was re­quired to ap­ply the new in­ter­na­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion code, the Gov­ern­ment re­tained the dis­cre­tion to grant ex­emp­tions un­der the ex­ist­ing le­gal no­tice.

“We had to demon­strate that these ve­hi­cles are gen­uine hy­brid ve­hi­cles dri­ven by an elec­tric mo­tor. It took a lot of work from my ex­ec­u­tive and my­self, but once we showed the en­gi­neer­ing be­hind the tech­nol­o­gy, the ex­emp­tion was grant­ed,” he said.

Bab­wah praised Tan­coo, Cus­toms and their re­spec­tive teams for act­ing swift­ly, not­ing that deal­ers had ve­hi­cles at the port, in tran­sit and al­ready cleared but await­ing reg­is­tra­tion.

“The ve­hi­cles now are free of all tax­es. It goes back to how it was be­fore the last two weeks. Any­one im­port­ing a qual­i­fy­ing mild hy­brid ve­hi­cle will be able to clear it with­out pay­ing tax­es,” he said.

He stressed that Cus­toms had act­ed with­in the law and should not be blamed for ini­tial­ly ap­ply­ing the re­vised clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

“Cus­toms had to do their work. If they had not charged the tax, they would have bro­ken the law. Our role was to make the nec­es­sary rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and we were able to show that these ve­hi­cles qual­i­fied for the ex­emp­tion,” Bab­wah said.

Look­ing ahead, Bab­wah said con­tin­ued con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try would be nec­es­sary be­fore fu­ture leg­isla­tive changes are in­tro­duced, par­tic­u­lar­ly as hy­brid tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to evolve.

“Tech­nol­o­gy is chang­ing very quick­ly. Man­u­fac­tur­ers are de­vel­op­ing dif­fer­ent types of hy­brid sys­tems, so con­sul­ta­tion is im­por­tant be­fore leg­is­la­tion is made,” he said.

Bab­wah not­ed that while the ex­emp­tion re­mains in place, it is not per­ma­nent and fu­ture changes will de­pend on Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments and on­go­ing con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers.

Mean­while, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo sought to re­as­sure deal­ers and con­sumers, say­ing there would be no ad­di­tion­al costs for ve­hi­cles al­ready im­port­ed or cur­rent­ly in tran­sit.

“At this point, the per­sons who are im­port­ing the very same ve­hi­cles that they were im­port­ing be­fore face no change in the cost to them. If you have ve­hi­cles on the sea, ve­hi­cles at the port or ve­hi­cles al­ready im­port­ed, there is no new cost at­tached to them,” Tan­coo said.

Last week, deal­ers raised con­cerns af­ter Cus­toms ap­plied the up­dat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion to sev­er­al mild hy­brid mod­els, in­clud­ing the Toy­ota Hyry­der, Taisor, Suzu­ki Fronx, Grand Vi­tara, Swift, Er­ti­ga and XL7, prompt­ing fears that the ve­hi­cles would lose their long-stand­ing tax con­ces­sions.