An increase in custom duty will eventually result in escalation of prices of automobiles.
With an aim at promoting Electric Vehicles, she also said that the government has allocated Rs 10,000 crore to the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME II) scheme on April 1, 2019 for faster adoption of electric vehicles.
She also announced launch of interoperable transport card to be used for transport.
She said that the main objective of the scheme is to provide necessary charging infrastructure and incentivising easy and affordable mode of transportation for the common man, and thus aims to encourage faster adoption of electric vehicles
“Government has already moved GST council to lower the GST rate on electric vehicles (EV) from 12% to 5%,” Sitharaman said.
“Also to make EVs affordable for consumers our government will provide additional income tax deduction of 1.5 lakh rupees on the interest paid on the loans taken to purchase EVs, I propose to increase special additional excise duty and road and infrastructure cess each one by 1 rupee a litre on petrol and diesel,” the FM added.