10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. Rohitha Abeygunawardhana

New Democratic Front· Kalutara· 20 January 2026 ·Oral question: Oral Question: Vehicle Imports and Revenue Collection (Q.38/2026)

Public Finance
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Rohitha Abeygunawardhana questioned the Deputy Minister about the levy imposed on imported vehicles remaining unsold after 90 days from submission of documents to Sri Lanka Customs. He argued that normal clearance can take around 40 days, leaving limited time for sale before a 3 per cent recurring levy applies every 30 days, increasing costs to consumers. He asked whether the Government would consider revising this arrangement.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Minister, thank you. My first supplementary: from the date documents are submitted to Sri Lanka Customs for a vehicle until clearance, if sale does not occur within 90 days, a 3% levy is added every 30 days thereafter. Even normal processing and clearance take about 40 days, leaving a narrow window to find a customer. After another 30 days, another 3% applies, and again after the next 30 days; this burdens the end consumer, potentially reaching significant percentages over months. Will you consider changes to this arrangement?

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Tuesday, 20 January 2026 ·No. 23200 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
Page · column
not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
Permalink
/lk/speeches/8938

Cite as: The Hon. Rohitha Abeygunawardhana. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 20 January 2026. No. 23200. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/8938