As Electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular in the world owing to the fact that they are powered by electricity and emit no Carbon dioxide or harmful pollutant for the environment. The increased concern regarding global warming has had people shifting towards environment-friendly cars.
On Friday, Finance minister Miftah Ismail proposed to withdraw 16% customs duty on charging stations for electric vehicles. He proposed this during the budget speech for the fiscal year 2018-2019.
He said that customs duty on import of electric cars is proposed to be reduced from 50% to 25% including exemption from 15 % regulatory duty. While of CKD( completely knocked down) kits for assembling electric cars in Pakistan os proposed at 10 %.
Big market players have already expressed their plans to enter Pakistan next year. Hyundai, Germany’s Volkswagen, France’s Renault have partnered with others to enter Pakistan’s auto market.
United Motors and Sazgar have also planned to start manufacturing four-wheel vehicles.
Electric cars are certainly the future of the auto industry. This new proposed budget if approved is going to facilitate all those who have been hesitant to import electric cars due to high duty.
While there has been a strong reaction by the opposition, the country hopes to have a cut on customs duty approved in the budget of 2018-2019 so, that import of electric cars becomes easy for Pakistanis.
The government had put a restriction on import of used cars a few months ago for easing the pressure on foreign exchange reserves. This led to a situation where thousands of cars were stranded at the port and this forced the government to remove the restriction and things went normal again.
