Govt to consider oil ministry’s advice of imposing special tax on diesel cars

13 Jun 2012 Evaluate

Indian government, which remains in a tight spot over doing away with the subsidies on prices of petroleum products especially that of widely used diesel, is now contemplating the idea of taxing automobiles fuelled by it. The government is believed to be favorably considering the Union Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas, Jaipal Reddy's recommendation that a special tax on diesel cars be imposed in order to discourage their excessive usage which has resulted due to widening gap between petrol and diesel prices.

The oil minister in his recommendations has insisted on imposing an additional tax of Rs 170,000 on small diesel vehicles and Rs 2,55,000 on medium and large diesel vehicles like sedans and SUVs to check dieselization of the economy. With the revenues from additional levies, the oil ministry plans to meet part of the revenue losses of state oil firms in selling fuels below market rates.

The move comes as demand for diesel powered automobiles has jumped to over 55% of the total 1.63 lakh units sold in May 2012 when compared to a growth rate of 38% last year. Sales of diesel cars have soared because they are more fuel efficient as they give around 30% higher mileage compared to petrol fuelled cars. Moreover, the cost of running the vehicle too remains substantially skewed in favor of diesel, prices of which due to political compulsions remain unmoved in the country for almost a year.

However, the development does not seems to have gone down well with car manufacturers who have been busy lobbying hard against any such move as it would be a double whammy for them. On one hand the demand for petrol powered cars has already waned owing to the decontrol of petrol and recent steep hikes in its prices while on the other, imposing additional taxes on diesel fuelled cars would adversely impact demand and also take away the lucrativeness of the Indian automobile industry.

A recent SIAM report showed that domestic car sales in May registered a growth of 3.10 percent, the slowest growth since October as higher borrowing costs and fuel prices dissuaded buyers from owning new four wheelers. With no aggressive softening of interest rates by RBI, higher running cost and recent price hikes owing to the excise duty hike in Budget, it has increasingly become difficult for car manufacturers to keep up the sales momentum as demand has been adversely impacted.

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