20 Dec 2017 Noticias Transport

Zimbabwe Calls for a Revision of Its Tax System to Attract Cleaner and Efficient Vehicles

13 December 2017

In his opening remarks at a national workshop to discuss the findings of a fuel economy study in Zimbabwe, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Energy and Power Development, Mr. Partson Mbiriri thanked the UN Environment for supporting the vehicle inventory study which he noted was important to not only support the import of safer, cleaner, and more fuel efficient vehicles into Zimbabwe, but was also going to contribute to Zimbabwe’s commitment towards climate change. The fuel economy inventory study was carried out by the University of Zimbabwe and coordinated by the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority. Zimbabwe is one of the ten countries in Africa being supported through the FIA Foundation funds to analyze their vehicle fleet in terms of fuel economy trends.

Participants were informed that there was a significant drop in the import of new light duty vehicles in Zimbabwe - from 15.7% in 2005 to 3.8% in 2016 – mainly due to the introduction of surtax on vehicles older than 5 years. The average import age also dropped for 8.9 years in 2005 to 13.3 in 2016.

Among the key recommendations were the need to establish mechanisms to develop and/or revise the fuel tax options / tax rebate systems in relation to CO2 emissions and fuel efficiency levels for better fuel consumption in the country’s vehicle fleet.