Customs approves sale of 71 luxury cars
Vehicles worth Tk 114cr sold at only Tk 12.53cr for poor response at auction
Chattogram Custom House has approved the handover of 71 luxury cars to the highest bidders at an auction for a total of just Tk 12.53 crore even though the vehicles have a combined market value of Tk 114 crore.
Customs officials said they have been forced to sell these vehicles at such a low price due to poor response as the cars were sent for auction at least 6 times in the last 11 years.
Besides, the cars were taking up the already dwindling space at Chattogram port while the conditions of the vehicles themselves were worsening day by day.
On September 25, the customs house auctioned off about 78 luxury cars, including BMW, Land Rover, Mitsubishi, Mercedes and Lexus brands, through physically submitting documents for the e-auction process, where bidders showed interest in 71 of them.
The highest bid ranges of the cars is Tk 2.5 lakh to 50.5 lakh.
On Wednesday, the customs authority published the names of the 78 top bidders in the auction, where more than 500 people participated.
Earlier, about 111 vehicles were auctioned more than five times but the customs were able to sell only 33 of them.
Most of the bids did not reach the expected price as the cars were brought to Chattogram port around a decade ago duty-free under a UN convention.
The "UN Customs Convention on the Temporary Importation of Private Road Vehicles of 1954" facilitates a privilege known as Carnet de Passage.
It allows tourists to bring their vehicles to a country without payment of customs duties, provided the vehicles are taken back with the foreign nationals.
According to the highest bidders list, a Mitsubishi mini jeep attracted the highest bid of Tk 2.5 lakh at the auction although the price of the vehicle was Tk 1.39 crore, which is around 2 per cent of the reserved value.
SS Trading Corporation is the top bidder of the car, which is 1834cc and made by Japan in 2000.
The highest bid for a 2006 model Range Rover was Tk 50.5 lakh by Dhaka based trading company Sweets Ltd . However, the reserve value of the car is Tk 3.45 crore.
Santosh Soren, deputy commissioner of the Customs House, Chattogram, told The Daily Star that the condition of the vehicle had deteriorated due to its long stay at the port.
"As a result, a good response was not received from the buyers even through e-auction process," he said.
"According to the rules of the auction, it has been decided to sell these cars to the top bidders," Soren added.
All the cars came from the UK but most of them were produced in Germany and Japan at least 16 to 27 years ago, according to the auction section of the customs house.