RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo will meet rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) on Mon­day amid grow­ing fears that a new Cus­toms and Ex­cise rul­ing could crip­ple car deal­er­ships by dri­ving up the cost of mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles by more than $50,000.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Tan­coo con­firmed that dis­cus­sions had been arranged fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by the in­dus­try.

The meet­ing comes af­ter Cus­toms and Ex­cise is­sued a clas­si­fi­ca­tion rul­ing that deal­ers say re­moves long­stand­ing tax con­ces­sions on sev­er­al mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles, leav­ing im­porters fac­ing thou­sands of dol­lars in un­ex­pect­ed tax­es on ve­hi­cles al­ready or­dered or in tran­sit.

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Gen­er­al Or­der No 24 of 2026, dat­ed Ju­ly 22, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, is­sued a clas­si­fi­ca­tion rul­ing cov­er­ing sev­er­al Maru­ti Suzu­ki and Toy­ota Kir­loskar Mo­tor ve­hi­cles.

The rul­ing lists the Suzu­ki Fronx, Suzu­ki Grand Vi­tara, Suzu­ki Swift, Suzu­ki Er­ti­ga, Suzu­ki XL7 and Toy­ota Ur­ban Cruis­er Taisor as Smart Hy­brid Ve­hi­cles equipped with a Smart “mild” Hy­brid Ve­hi­cle (SHVS) sys­tem “in which the elec­tric mo­tor does not func­tion as a mo­tor for propul­sion.”

Since the pub­li­ca­tion, TTA­DA has warned that the de­ci­sion could force some deal­er­ships out of busi­ness, with oth­ers fac­ing se­vere fi­nan­cial hard­ship af­ter cus­tomers had al­ready signed con­tracts or paid de­posits based on the pre­vi­ous tax regime.

As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Visham Bab­wah said TTA­DA had writ­ten to both the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and the Fi­nance Min­is­ter seek­ing an ur­gent meet­ing, in­sist­ing that the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion should be sus­pend­ed un­til con­sul­ta­tions are held and ex­ist­ing con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions ho­n­oured.

If im­ple­ment­ed, the rul­ing would see the price of some pop­u­lar mod­els soar. Deal­ers es­ti­mate that the Toy­ota Ur­ban Cruis­er Taisor, pre­vi­ous­ly re­tail­ing for about $150,000 to $155,000, could now cost as much as $215,000 be­cause of the ad­di­tion­al im­port du­ty, mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax and VAT.

Bab­wah ques­tioned the ba­sis for the de­ci­sion.

“My ar­gu­ment with them is that the ve­hi­cle is built, sold and func­tions as a hy­brid ve­hi­cle. I don’t know what lit­er­a­ture they are us­ing or what they have based their de­ci­sion on to say the ve­hi­cle is not a hy­brid.”

He said the As­so­ci­a­tion was seek­ing a three-month mora­to­ri­um sim­i­lar to tran­si­tion­al arrange­ments nor­mal­ly grant­ed af­ter bud­get changes, al­low­ing deal­ers to ho­n­our agree­ments with over­seas sup­pli­ers and lo­cal cus­tomers.

Bab­wah said the rul­ing af­fects both the new and used ve­hi­cle sec­tors.

“This is used cars and new cars. If you go to Suzu­ki, all the new ve­hi­cles are mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles.”

He es­ti­mat­ed the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion would in­crease tax­es by be­tween $40,000 and $50,000 per ve­hi­cle.

One deal­er told Guardian Me­dia that many busi­ness­es had al­ready im­port­ed ve­hi­cles from In­dia or ac­cept­ed cus­tomer de­posits based on the pre­vi­ous in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law. Deal­ers now fear they will ei­ther have to ab­sorb the ad­di­tion­al tax­es at a sub­stan­tial loss or pass the in­creas­es on to con­sumers, po­ten­tial­ly pric­ing many buy­ers out of the mar­ket.

Some al­so ex­pressed con­cern that the new in­ter­pre­ta­tion could be ap­plied to ve­hi­cles al­ready cleared by Cus­toms but await­ing fi­nal doc­u­men­ta­tion be­fore li­cens­ing.

Al­though some deal­ers have sug­gest­ed le­gal ac­tion, Bab­wah said the as­so­ci­a­tion’s im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty is di­a­logue.

“We are hop­ing to have dis­cus­sions and reach a so­lu­tion that will ben­e­fit every­body—the deal­ers, the Gov­ern­ment and the cit­i­zens of the coun­try.”

TTA­DA vice-pres­i­dent Rhon­dell Fee­les said the As­so­ci­a­tion was dis­ap­point­ed that no con­sul­ta­tion took place be­fore the pol­i­cy change.

“Know­ing the cor­dial re­la­tion­ship that we at the T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion have main­tained with the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, I am sur­prised that we were not con­tact­ed by the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms to meet on this is­sue,” Fee­les said.

He ar­gued that the ex­ist­ing hy­brid con­ces­sion does not re­quire a ve­hi­cle to be pro­pelled sole­ly by its elec­tric mo­tor and said im­porters should be giv­en suf­fi­cient time to ad­just if Cus­toms in­tends to adopt a dif­fer­ent in­ter­pre­ta­tion.