The Bangladesh Reconditioned Vehicle Importers and Dealers Association on Thursday demanded an end to ‘discriminatory’ valuation method in calculating customs duty on import of reconditioned vehicles and sought introduction of a rational method to save the sector.
The BARVIDA also demanded that the National Board of Revenue reduce supplementary duty to 30-250 per cent from 45-500 per cent on the import of different types of reconditioned cars.
The association also sought rearrangement of the slabs of the engine capacity being measured in cc, or cubic centimetres, for imposing supplementary duty for import of used cars.
At a pre-budget discussion with the NBR, the BARVIDA proposed that the NBR accept used cars’ year-wise base value specified in the Yellow Book published from Japan for imposing customs duty on import of reconditioned vehicles.
They said that if the revenue board could not accept year-wise base value, it could set assessable value by giving 10 per cent depreciation for every year with a 25-per cent trade discount from the new price specified in the book.
The Yellow Book is published every month containing the latest depreciated prices of used cars and their prices in the manufacturing year, also called ‘new price’, they said.
BARVIDA leaders said Bangladeshi importers faced problems as the customs authorities accepted only the new price with a 35-per cent consolidated depreciation for 5 years old car in calculating duty on used cars.
‘The importers of used cars have to pay more duty than the importers of new cars pay for same model new car because of such valuation system which is totally discriminatory and unacceptable,’ said Habib Ullah Dawn, president of the association.
He said that import of reconditioned cars and revenue collection from the sector saw sharp fall because of such discrimination.
‘In the first nine months (July-March) of the current fiscal year, we imported only 6,500 cars and paid Tk 800 crore as revenue to the government. But in 2009-2010, we imported 32,225 cars and paid Tk 3,076 crore to the NBR in revenue,’ he said.
Over the last few years, the BARVIDA had been demanding the NBR to change the valuation method but the demand has so far remained unmet, he said.
The BARVIDA alleged that low quality brand new cars from India, China, Korea and other countries flooded the market through price manipulation using the discriminatory valuation method.
Consumers are being deceived buying substandard new cars while the government is losing revenue from reconditioned car imports, they said.
Imported used cars have 90 per cent market share in the country and more than 90 per cent of such cars are imported from Japan.
The association proposed a four-tier cc slab for imposing supplementary duty in place of the existing six-tier slab in import of reconditioned car.
NBR chairman Ghulam Hussain said that the NBR would consider the proposals particularly proposals related to valuation method and rearrangement of cc slab.
NBR member Farid Uddin and former BARVIDA president Abdul Haque spoke, among others, at the meeting.
-With New Age input
