A scrappage scheme, which pays up to €2,000 to trade an old junk car for a new one, starts on Monday and closes in a year or when 2,000 old vehicles are scrapped.
Launching the scheme yesterday, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said the idea was to replace old vehicles with a new one having cleaner, Euro V and Euro IV engines.
The average age of cars in Malta, he said, was 14 years and the scheme would help the country achieve it targets to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.
The system, only open to private individuals, pays a rebate of 15.25 per cent of a new car’s cost up to a maximum of €2,000 in return for a vehicle that is at least 10 years old. The car must have been registered right up to October 26 of this year, when the scheme was first announced in the Budget and all fees, licences and pending fines have to be paid.
The new cars bought cannot be longer than 4,460 mm and with emissions not exceeding the 150g/km mark. In the words of the Finance Minister, this was meant to encourage the purchase of small cars but the parameters hardly restrict the choice to city cars.
A BMW 1 series, for instance, falls squarely within the scheme, being just over 4.2 metres long and with emissions that can be as low as 118g/km.
Gasan and Muscats Motors were quick to welcome the move. Gasan said it was “putting the full weight of its support” behind the scheme and gave a list of cars from its range that fell within the parameters. Among the cars indicated are the family-oriented C-Max, which is essentially a larger version of the Focus, the Volvo C30 and the Mazda 3, also a family car.
Muscat’s Motors took the opportunity to offer a further €2,000 discount on every BMW and Mini bought till the end of the year, even for those not eligible for the scheme.
Second hand imported cars are excluded. Mr Fenech said once prospective buyers had the de-registration certificate in hand they could take their old car to Tar-Robba Ltd in Kirkop, which, he said, was the only registered and fully equipped car scrapper in Malta, for the vehicle to be scrapped. The car will be broken down for export.
He said the scheme was also open to first-time car buyers who did not have an old car to scrap. In this case, they would get half the rebate up to a maximum of €1,000. The remaining €1,000 will be transferred to a special government fund to be used to scrap other cars.