(Trinidad Guardian) Visham Babwah, the president of the T&T Automotive Dealers’ Association (TTADA), which is the body representing foreign used car dealers, is accusing Philip Knaggs, President, Auto-motive Dealers Association of T&T of talking “rubbish.” Babwah was refuting claims made by Knaggs in the Guardian on Wednesday that increasing the minimum age of imported foreign used vehicles from four to six years would lead to older vehicles flooding the market and cause a “traffic gridlock.”
“He doesn’t know what he is talking about. He is talking rubbish.
The real reason for the traffic is that there is not enough infrastructure by the Government to deal with the movement of vehicles. It is the new cars that are causing the traffic,” he told the Guardian on Thursday. Babwah pointed out that over the years the amount of foreign used vehicles that have been imported has been reduced.
“Over the last four years there has been a reduction by 75 per cent of foreign used vehicles on the roads. In 2010 the quota for foreign used vehicles was 13,497 yet only 5,497 vehicles were imported. It was the new car dealers who lobbied for this system years ago,” he said.
In the article Knaggs also said T&T is becoming the “dumping ground” for older foreign used vehicles with older emission systems. Babwah said there are over 90 countries in the world that buy these foreign used vehicles and many of them include first world countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.
Babwah added that the new car dealers had a “monopoly” on the car market and when foreign used vehicles entered the market 15 years ago then consumers began to have choices. Last week, Trade Minister, Stephen Cadiz met with the foreign car dealers stakeholders at a meeting in which he said that the current quota for used cars would remain until 2013. Babwah said the TTADA has a membership of 100 dealers out of 140 foreign used car dealers in the country.
