New Delhi [India], Sept 11 : The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) on Monday opined that the introduction of differential taxes on hybrid cars is necessary to encourage hybrid vehicles.
"It is encouraging to see that the cess on hybrid vehicles has not been increased. This is a good step, since these also need promotions. We hope that these rates would be stable, and states would not be required to unilaterally enhance road taxes," SIAM DG Vishnu Mathur told ANI.
With regards to the recent cess figures announced during the 21st meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council on Saturday, Mathur stated that the taxation on vehicles has been brought back to more or less the same as the pre-GST period, adding that real benefit will come only by way of introducing a more efficient system overall.
"With the new GST Cess, the taxation on mid-sized passenger cars have been almost restored to the pre-GST levels, while taxes on luxury cars and SUVs have been slightly moderated as compared to the pre-GST rates.
Also, now there are a few more slabs of taxes on the auto industry as compared to the erstwhile excise duty structure," he said.
"However, the long standing anomaly in the taxation of 10-13 seater vehicles could have been fully corrected and these should have been fixed at a GST rate of 28 percent without any cess as these are public transport vehicles and not for personal use," added Mathur.
With regards to the sales figures from the month of August, Mathur stated that the segment has witnessed a positive overall growth of approximately 14.5 percent.
However, with regards to commercial vehicles, low growth was witnessed on a low base, and has still not reached peak levels of production, as of 2012.
"In the passenger vehicle segment, dip in purchase was due to GST. The impact on rural markets is slowly wading off. The commercial vehicle growth is led by light commercial vehicle segment. However, there is still room left for growth," he said. The industry produced a total 11,950,356 vehicles including passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, three wheelers, two wheelers and quadricycle in April-August 2017 as against 10,919,150 in April-August 2016, registering a growth of 9.44 percent over the same period last year.
The sale of Passenger Vehicles grew by 8.67 percent in April-August 2017 over the same period last year.
Within the Passenger Vehicles, Passenger Cars, Utility Vehicle and Vans grew by 6.57 percent, 15.97 percent and 2.27 percent respectively in April-August 2017 over the same period last year.
The overall Commercial Vehicles segment grew by 1.58 percent in April-August 2017 as compared to the same period last year.
Medium and Heavy Commercial Vehicles (M (and) HCVs) declined by (-) 13.60 percent, however, Light Commercial Vehicles grew by 12.37 percent in April-August 2017 over the same period last year.
Three Wheelers sales declined by (-) 16.26 percent in April-August 2017 over the same period last year.
Within the Three Wheelers, Passenger Carrier sales registered a negative growth of (-) 20.55 percent, however, Goods Carrier grew by 3.51 percent in April-August 2017 over April-August 2016.
Two Wheelers sales registered a growth at 10.41 percent in April-August 2017 over April-August 2016. Within the Two Wheelers segment, Scooters and Motorcycles grew by 18.27 percent and 7.89 percent respectively, while Mopeds declined by (-) 8.60 percent in April-August 2017 over April-August 2016.
In April-August 2017, overall automobile exports grew by 10.27 percent. While Passenger Vehicles, Three Wheelers and Two Wheelers registered a growth of 2.62 percent, 17.27 percent and 13.82 percent respectively, Commercial Vehicle exports declined by (-) 33.08 percent in April-August 2017 over the same period last year.
Source: ANI
