New decision on selling vehicles imported for former MPs: NBR Chairman

Instead of auctioning, a new decision will be made to sell the vehicles imported with duty-free facilities for the former members of parliament, National Board of Revenue (NBR) Chairman Abdur Rahman Khan said on Friday.

He was speaking to the media after a meeting with the users of Chittagong Customs House at noon.

“We sent the vehicles for auctioning but did not get expected response. Now we have been thinking about some alternatives. For example, some of the government organisations have proposed that they want to buy the vehicles at 60 per cent of the price. We don’t want to sell those cheaply,” he said.

Stating that the price for each of the vehicles is about Tk 80-90 million, the NBR expressed they would discuss with the higher echelon of the government about their next course of action in case they do not get an appropriate price for the vehicles.

“The decision will be made shortly as I’m against scrapping the vehicles keeping those unused for a long time,” he told the media.

Following the 12th parliamentary elections, former MPs imported the duty-free cars. But on 6 August last year, the parliament was dissolved following the political changeover. The NBR also cancelled the duty-free facility. Then the former MPs left the vehicles.

In February, the Chittagong Customs House auctioned 24 out of the 42 vehicles but the interested consumers offered unusually low prices, ranging from Tk 100,000 to 3.1 million, for the high-end cars.

The customs house did not sell those at that time.

Responding to the question of a newsperson, the NBR chairman said, “Around 6,000 containers have been lying idle at the port for a long time. We’ve taken initiatives to clear those through auction. We will handover those to the highest bidder from the first auction. This will be done so that no time is lost for auction.”

Earlier, the NBR chairman had a meeting with C&F Agents’ Association leaders, who highlighted various issues they face in import and export related activities.