It's budget day soon, and we hope that the registration tax regime is reformed to make the option of sourcing a previously owned vehicle from overseas a far more reasonable proposition.
This would be a good thing all round - for buyers, environmentally and socially, not to mention the political kudos that would accrue, something that our government is of late not getting much of.
Some facts:
The pre-owned vehicle market will always exist. Heaven forbid that vehicle owners would be faced with a total loss when the time comes to replace/upgrade.
People buy pre-owned vehicles simply because they are cheaper than new ones, i.e. that is what they can afford. If they could afford to buy the vehicle they need, new, then they would do so. "Afford", of course, is subjective - it is not just the very common case of having or not having the money, it can also be a case of not being able to justify spending the money on a new vehicle, for whatever reason. Very obvious it seems, or is it not to everyone?
An imported pre-owned vehicle is very far from the devil it is often made out to be by specific interest groups. What, effectively, is an imported pre-owned vehicle? All an imported pre-owned vehicle represents is the option for a buyer, in the market for a non-new vehicle, to source such a vehicle not just from the limited pool available locally, but also from an incredibly vaster selection available around the globe. How this can be a bad thing I cannot fathom.
Hence, people buy imported pre-owned vehicles, because for the same money as one sourced locally, they are often getting a newer, higher specified vehicle in better condition. If these factors did not exist, no one would bother. This despite the fact that due to the current abominable tax regime with massive "minimum values" imposed irrespective of the value of the import, once landed in Malta the cost price of a vehicle potentially doubles, triples, or more. Therefore, people are still buying far older vehicles than they potentially could do with the same money if this tax did not exist!
Naturally if people are buying better, later model vehicles with their money, this is environmentally beneficial. Furthermore, with the current ever increasing cost of living pressures on families and individuals, it seems that more and more persons will be making a choice of vehicle from the pre-owned offerings. This is a worldwide phenomenon, one which Malta is most certainly not exempted from.
Why, therefore, should we continue to maintain artificial barriers to such persons' choices, misguidedly attempting to restrict pre-owned vehicle imports by fiscal or regulatory means, thus relegating persons to buying an inferior and older vehicle with the money they can put aside for such a purpose?