News Desk : dhakamirror.com
People are taking little interest in electric vehicles as the government has framed a policy to introduce the vehicles as these are environment-friendly.
After introducing the registration of these vehicles, till mid-April about 10 electric vehicles got registered with the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, the BRTA officials said.
Different incentives are necessary to make these vehicles popular, they also said.
Earlier, the government issued a gazette notification for the Electric Motor Vehicle Registration and Operation Policy 2023 on April 18 while the initiative started in 2018.
The government framed the policy of converting minimum 30 per cent of road transport sector vehicles into electric ones by 2030 and keeping a promise to reduce emission of 3.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from this sector by 2030.
Nur Mohammad Mazumder, chair of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, told New Age on Saturday that they had started to give registration to the electric vehicles since December 2022 when the rules of the Road Transport Act 2018 2018 had been finalised.
‘Currently, about 10 vehicles have got registration. We need to encourage people to buy these environment-friendly vehicles by giving different incentives,’ he said.
The policy says that the ministry/division/organisation concerned, including the National Board of Revenue, will announce special incentive for certain period to make electric vehicles popular.
According to the policy definition, an electric vehicle or EV is a vehicle which is powered exclusively by one electric motor or more whose traction energy is supplied by rechargeable batteries installed in the vehicle while bicycles or rickshaws and rickshaw vans have been kept out of the purview of the definition.
For charging, these vehicles will follow the Power Division’s Electric Vehicle Charging Guideline 2022 and for construction and maintenance, these vehicles will follow the 2018 road law and its 2022 rules.
The BRTA will have the authority to regulate the vehicles and conduct processes of registration, fitness checking, route permit allotment and legal action in the case of violation of laws for electric vehicles will be same as the fuel-run motor vehicles.
For marketing or assembling these vehicles, the companies will need to take type approval from the BRTA.
The policy says that the government will fix the economic lifetime, registration fees and rent for these vehicles in the cases of commercial uses.
Slow-moving electric vehicles with 30-kilometre/per hour speed will not be allowed to run on the national and the regional highways and existing unsafe electric vehicles must be transformed into safe ones by approved companies.
Income tax fixed by the NBR will be applicable for these vehicles, only new electric vehicles will be imported and Joint Venture Company can be formed by local and international companies for manufacturing and transforming these vehicles.
Private sector will be encouraged to install electric vehicle charging stations, testing and research labs for these vehicles will be established by the government or under public-private partnerships.
