Mitsubishi car for Tk 50,010!

A Mitsubishi car has attracted the highest bid of Tk 50,010 at the auction of the Chattogram Custom House although the price of the vehicle was Tk 1.39 crore.

The bid came as the customs authorities auctioned off 112 vehicles on November 4. The bidders showed interests in 110 vehicles.

A total of 551 bidders participated in the auction, and a list of the top 110 bidders was published today.

All of the cars were brought to the Chattogram port around a decade ago duty-free under a United Nations convention, a source said.

The UN Customs Convention on the Temporary Importation of Private Road Vehicles of 1954 allows users to bring vehicles to a country without paying customs duties, provided the cars are taken back when they return home.

Bangladesh is not a signatory to the convention, and in 2011, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) introduced a rule, saying foreign nationals had to provide security deposits equal to the duties and taxes of the imported cars to have a car released. But the prospective beneficiaries did not take the delivery.

In 2013, the NBR stopped the facility altogether.

At the auction, the highest bid for a 1995 model Mitsubishi was only Tk 50,010. The engine displacements range of the car is 2,972cc. The reserve value is Tk 1.39 crore.

The bids for 27 BMW cars ranged from Tk 4 lakh to Tk 38 lakh. It was Tk 3.5 lakh to Tk 43 lakh for 10 Range Rover cars.

The bids for most of the cars ranged from 5 to 10 per cent of their reserve value, which consists of the price of the vehicles plus tax. However, customs procedures discourage the sale of non-perishable goods below 60 per cent of the reserve value in the first auction. The cap is not applicable in the subsequent auctions.

Customs officials say they have not received higher bids as cars have become unusable as they have been abandoned for a long time on the port yards.

 "We have published the list of the highest bidders. The auction committee will decide whether the cars will be given to them at the declared price," Md Al Amin, deputy commissioner of the Customs House Chittagong, told The Daily Star.

BMW fetched the highest bid as its 2007 model car was offered Tk 53 lakh. The reserve value of the 2,993cc car was Tk 2.38 crore. Farzana Trading in Chattogram offered the highest price.

All of the cars came from the United Kingdom, and most of them were produced in Germany, according to the auction section of the customs house.

Of them, 28 are of BMW brand, 24 Mercedes-Benz, 23 Mitsubishi, 10 Land Rover, nine Lexus, four Toyota, four Ford, and two Honda brand. Produced 15 to 26 years ago, the vehicles have engine displacements ranging from 1,796cc to 4,398cc.

Bangladesh does not permit importing cars aged more than five years. So, the winning bidders will have to collect a clearance permit from the commerce ministry for 95 of the vehicles.