Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers has opposed government's plan to import used car in India. Trading of used cars in India may pose a threat to the growing auto industry in the country, it says. SIAM feels that such a move shall lead to import of refurbished products from developed countries rather than exporting used cars from India to neighbouring countries likes African nations. It has raised concerns over several clauses in WTO's revised Non-Agricultural Market Access draft.
“The proposal on initiatives for the elimination of tariffs in specific sectors is in complete breach of the mandate that these initiatives are merely a supplementary and non-mandatory modality,” said the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (Acma).
According to the revised proposal of WTO, there should be free trade of remanufactured or refurbished goods between countries. It also states that “Trade in used vehicle, under any name, is essentially trans-boundary movement of waste of a country and governments should not encourage trade of such vehicles. As such countries should be free to decide how they want to treat different types of used products and not to be forced through WTO mandate and such products should not be treated as new under any circumstances."
Indian auto industry fears that import of such used cars shall directly hit domestic manufacturing in the country.
