Vehicle Importing Issue: Annual Vehicle Importing Permit To Government Employees

EuroCham Myanmar and Automotive Association of Myanmar (AAM) opposed the announcement on vehicle importing system granted to government employees, according to a press conference on Wednesday in Yangon.

The press conference was organized by EuroCham Myanmar Advocacy Group and Automotive Association of Myanmar (AAM) aiming to share about the impacts and challenges based on the decision of granting annual vehicle importing permit to government employees with 25 years of service – the announcement made by the Ministry of Commerce on 2nd January of this year also says Tax Free.

Chairman, Automotive Association of Myanmar, Aung Win said “This is our announcement to the government and people to cancel the decision of granting annual vehicle importing permit. If the government wants to move on this decision, they will need a good policy because the automobile market is already destroyed due to some reasons. This unexpected vehicle importing system announcement makes huge impact on the implementation of ease of doing business in Myanmar. We can’t estimate the exact result as that system is not used in other countries.” 

The annual automobile importing permit may create negative economic impacts, parallel market development, disasters for automobile industry and it’s against some articles of the recent national automotive policy issued in 2019, said Executive Director of EuroCham Myanmar.

Executive Director, EuroCham Myanmar, Marc de la Fouchardiere said “We’ve mentioned the national automotive policy which is a good thing and which creates clarity to foreign investments. Now, with this announcement, we feel that this goes against the policy that was announced. Therefore, as we said it create confusing towards existing investors in automotive sector but also I’m very importantly towards potential investment made in this sector in Myanmar and in actually any sector.”

Currently, about 17 automotive brands have factory and about 30 international brands are selling cars with responsibility in Myanmar.