Finance Minister, Chidambaram has announced the reduction in excise duty in the interim Budget. In automobile industry, the prices of cars, motorcycles, Sports Utility Vehicles(SUV) will be reduced.Excise duty on motorcycles and small cars should be reduced from 12% to 8%. Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV) will come down to 24% from 30%. The large cars should come with 20%-24%. The excise duty will be applicable up to June 20, 2014.
Finance Minister, P.Chidambaram said, “To give relief to the automobile industry, which is registering unprecedented negative growth, I propose to reduce excise duty”.
Maruti Suzuki, Chairman R.C. Bhargava said, “The only way to describe this is as a welcome change. Maruti always passes such benefits to customers and this time will be no different. This will hopefully, at least to some extent, revive demand in the automobile industry. My only concern is that this shouldn’t be a blip change, in the sense this should not be revised after the elections. The government has to let the reduced duty structure remain at least for the next 12-18 months until the auto industry is back to a 12-15% growth rate.”