Colombo, Nov 9 (AFP) Sri Lanka announced today plans toreplace all state-owned vehicles with electric or hybridmodels by 2025, a move that will be extended to privatevehicles by 2040.
Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera said the governmentwill phase out its fleet of diesel and petrol vehiclesincluding buses over the next eight years, switching toelectric or hybrid models.
Private owners have until 2040 to replace their cars,tuk-tuks and motorcycles, when the country plans to no longerallow any fossil fuel-burning vehicles on its roads, he said.
Sri Lanka is the latest country to announce plans tophase out fossil fuel vehicles.
Britain and France have said they want to end the sale ofdiesel and petrol cars by 2040. India wants to make newvehicle sales all-electric by 2030.
Sri Lanka had around 6.8 million vehicles, most importedfrom Japan and India, on its roads at the end of 2016,including nearly 720,000 cars.
To encourage citizens to replace their cars thegovernment announced a slew of measures including slashingtaxes on electric cars and hiking them on large fuel guzzlers,as well as introducing a new carbon tax on fossil fuel-burningvehicles.
"The tax on electric cars will be reduced by over amillion rupees ($6,600) to encourage motorists to switch toclean energy," Samaraweera told parliament while unveiling thegovernment's annual budget for 2018.
Import tax on large cars will be hiked by nearly $17,000,he said.
The government also offered cheap credit to the owners ofbuses and the country's 1.3 million tuk-tuk taxis to help themmake the switch.
Samaraweera presented the country's revenue andexpenditure proposals for 2018 a day after slashing taxes onsix commonly consumed commodities to curb high living costs asinflation hit 7.8 percent.
The government has blamed the record inflation on sharpincreases in food prices.
Tens of thousands of rice and vegetable farms were hit bysevere floods earlier this year that killed hundreds in theisland nation.
The finance minister also revised up the country's budgetdeficit for 2017 to 5.2 per cent of GDP from an earlierprojection of 4.6 per cent. (AFP)UZM.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.