"A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation!" - this catch phrase of the famous Ostap Bender has long been true. Indeed, the times are in the past when the presence of a car in a family was an indicator of well-being, wealth, position in society. However, some people still find it difficult to make such an expensive purchase: they have to take out loans from banks or borrow money from relatives. And then there was information that cars may soon rise in price.
It would seem, on the contrary, that cars should become cheaper, because Russia will officially join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the very next few days, and therefore, according to the rules of this organization, anti-crisis duties on imported cars should be abolished in the country.
However, the state bodies of the Russian Federation, in order to compensate for the decrease in budget revenues due to the reduction of the mentioned duties, decided to introduce the so-called recycling fee from September 1, 2012. As the name suggests, the official goal of the innovation is to offset the costs of recycling old, worn out or crashed vehicles that cannot be recovered. Only cars of those persons who enjoy diplomatic immunity, as well as rare cars manufactured more than 30 years ago, or imported into Russia from the territories of the countries of the Customs Union, that is, Kazakhstan and Belarus, will be exempted from this tax.
Car manufacturers are obligated to pay this fee. Of course, it is naive to expect that they will not try to compensate for the costs incurred at the expense of their buyers, that is, Russian citizens. For example, Toyota has already informed its Russian dealers that it will be forced to increase selling prices due to the scrappage fee. The cost of cars can rise by 0.2-10%, especially for those models with powerful engines.
Thus, an unpleasant surprise awaits motorists in the near future. It is too early to speak about the exact value of the price growth, since the amount of utilization fees has not yet been approved by the government of the Russian Federation. But in any case, we can talk about an approximate additional value of several tens of thousands of rubles for a passenger car.
