Customs to auction off 111 luxury cars

Chittagong Customs House (CCH) will tomorrow auction off 111 luxury cars, which were imported during the period between 2007 and 2012.

These vehicles were imported with a duty-free privilege called Carnet de Passages, under two UN treaties that allow tourists to bring their vehicles to a country without payment of customs duties, provided the vehicles are taken back by the foreign nationals.

The National Board of Revenue scrapped the duty-free import benefit in 2013, seeing that the privilege was being abused.

Earlier, the car owners were given more time to re-export the cars. The customs authorities finally took the decision to action off the cars.

Tapan Chandra Dey, deputy commissioner of CCH, said, “Tender has already been floated for auctioning off the 111 luxury cars; those will be sold after evaluating the tender bid after May 30.”

Most of those cars were imported by Bangladeshi citizens living in the United Kingdom. These cars include a total of 31 BMWs, 24 Mercedes, 21 Mitsubishi, nine Lexus, six Land Rover, five Toyota and Ford, three Jaguar, two Land Cruiser, one Pajero, one Honda, one Volkswagen, one Daewoo, and a Jeep.

Most of the cars were manufactured in Germany and Japan while others were in the USA and Mexico.

Earlier, two auctions were held on August 30, 2016 and on May 24, 2017 for selling 85 and 113 cars respectively. But customs authorities could not complete the process as the representatives of the agencies concerned were not present at the auctions. 

According to the NBR and Chittagong Port, the importers have to pay duty from 150 to 833 percent for importing cars. But under the carnet facilities, Bangladeshi expatriates brought 369 luxury cars with the duty-free facility in the country from 2007 to 2012.

A total of 120 cars out of these 369 were left in Chittagong Port. Of the remaining 249, 129 cars were taken back to the exporting country while 119 vehicles, which were released from the port but were not returned to the exporting countries, are being used in the country illegally. Importer of only one vehicle is now using the car by paying duties.