25/06/2024
Massive lot of EV loaded to Sri Lanka, which is under Zero percent custom Tariff...
Despite the Government's continued delay in lifting the vehicle import ban due to a lack of foreign reserves and the need to prioritise essential imports, a leading automobile assembly company has received cabinet approval to import electric vehicles or Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) in semi-knockdown (SKD) form for local assembly at a zero percent Customs tariff on the CIF value, Vehicle importers charged yesterday (24).
Vehicle Importers' Association of Sri Lanka (VIASL) President Prasad Manage addressing a press conference in Colombo alleged that: “Senok (Senok Automobile Assembly Pvt. Ltd.) has already shipped 100 to 150 SKD kits. Moreover, a vehicle without tires too can be counted as a SKD kit. Therefore they are importing an entire vehicle with an all-inclusive 0% flat tariff, instead of the existing 30% tariff, for the importation of brand new SKD kits for the assembly of Electric Vehicles, Electric Two Wheelers and Plug-in-Hybrid Vehicles. Moreover, the imported vehicles are Chinese vehicle brands.”
The VIASL President claimed that the alleged importer has placed more shipments and one is already on its way which must be stopped since it’s a huge sum of foreign outflow which is around $ 500 million and the country doesn’t get a rupee in return. Moreover, there is no standard, quality or safety check on the vehicles that they are currently shipping to the country.