The government has decided to cut down the customs duty to 50 percent which has made the imported motorcycles less expensive and readily available. In the past, those imported motorcycles which had an engine capacity of 800 ccs or less attracted 60 percent customs duty while those with the capacity of more than 800 ccs attracted 75 percent customs duty. However, the duty on both these motorcycle variants has been cut down to 50 percent by the Central Board of Excise and Customs on February 12. The import duty on gearbox, engine and the transmission mechanism has been reduced to 25 percent which earlier attracted a customs duty of 30 percent. The CBEC has also increased the customs duty for importing gearbox, a transmission mechanism, an engine which is not pre-assembled to 15 percent in order to promote the local assembling. The duty was 10 percent on these earlier.
The full imports or CBU bikes will become less expensive right now and so will the motorcycles of Indian Motorcycle, BMW Motorrad, and Aprilia after models from Kawasaki, Yamaha and Suzuki which are not assembled in India will be released. Triumph and Ducati are some very popular brands and they also have a very few imported models which is why not a very significant price change will be seen in their models. Harley Davidson has stated that it is very early to comment on the calculations about the price implications of the announcement on the models which available for sale in India. However, it is being anticipated that only full imports from the US will see a slash down in the prices.
Most of the brands are yet to study the effects that the announcement is going to have and calculate what cost benefits are being offered to the customers and on which models.