The long awaited revised National Automotive Policy (NAP) will be officially announced on January 20th. Here are the three key items on what we should expect from the revised NAP.
- The revised NAP may include tax breaks for vehicles with “clean” diesel and other energy-efficient combustion engines, as long the vehicle is locally assembled.This should bring positive cheers from the European marques in Malaysia, who have consistently called for the introduction of incentives on such vehicles. Should this come to light, expect more diesel variants of locally assembled vehicles from Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Peugeot and Volkswagen in the Malaysian market.
- Locally assembled hybrids will continue to enjoy the tax exemption as enjoyed in the previous years. With that, expect the Honda Jazz Hybrid to become Honda’s main player in the hybrid vehicle market, although it remains to be seen if Honda will also consider the CR-Z and the Insight for local assembly in Alor Gajah. Meanwhile, Toyota should be able to introduce the local assembly of the Toyota Camry Hybrid which debuted in KLIMS last year. There might be a possibility that the Prius and Prius C will be locally assembled in order to allow Toyota to sell their hybrid cars with more competitive pricing.
- The proposed end-of-life vehicles (ELV) policy will be revealed in detail during NAP on Jan 20th as well. The good news is, the ELV policy will not be made mandatory. Instead, it will be on a voluntary basis so as to encourage motorists to check their vehicles regularly.The existing 50 Puspakom vehicle inspection centers are insufficient to cater to the potential 11 million vehicles nationwide for ‘safety’ inspection should it go mandatory. It is estimated at least another 250 centers would be required to handle such a scale.
Meanwhile, the officials revealed that the revised NAP is not expected to touch on excise duties. So it remains to be seen if there will be any reduction of car prices, after the revised NAP is announced. Look out for our official report on this once the NAP is officially announced in 20th Jan 2014.
[Source: Business Times Malaysia]
