Saga of SUVs

Criticism aside, which I am sure is deserved; let us look at some pragmatic solutions, which can be summarised as follows:

Send at least one or two SUVs (the newer the better) to each of the districts, and if numbers permit at least one to each upazila headquarters. This will motivate the officials there to visit and oversee various development activities in remote locations. It will also compensate them to some extent for the lack of other amenities living far away from the divisional headquarters. I believe this will result in better performance by these officials.

In future, ban or impose punitive surcharge for the import of any SUV or similar large engine capacity passenger vehicle, with no surcharge if powered by diesel engine.

Import Hybrid cars and bring down hydrocarbon fuel consumption nationally around 60 percent at least! The government should encourage private importers to go for Hybrid cars, SUVs and light vehicles which are already marketed by Toyota and Honda and by Ford within the next six to eight months. These vehicles should be given very encouraging import duty structure say (5% maximum). The revenue lost in import duty will be more than made up by savings in hydrocarbon fuel import. Overall, it will be a tremendous national saving.

From July 2005 budget period, or even earlier, prices of all lighter hydrocarbon (petrol, octane etc) fuels should be increased by 5 to 10 percent to accelerate change over to Hybrid vehicles and discourage gas hungry larger vehicles. Similarly, import of all petrol based light vehicles be slapped on with a Hydrocarbon surcharge of say 15 to 20 percent over the existing duty structure to discourage petrol driven passenger automotive vehicles being imported, and encourage import of Hybrid vehicles.

From 2006 budget period the government should encourage and support the export of all petrol driven passenger vehicles on 'as is where is' or reconditioned basis to discourage the use of these gas-guzzlers, and remove them from Bangladesh.

Apart from very little fuel consumption, Hybrid cars are practically free from environment pollution; an important bonus particularly for our vehicle crowded cities.

As a citizen, I volunteer to constructively discuss the issue with relevant officials of the government and concerned agencies, if the government is really serious about introducing Hybrid vehicles and save our ever-increasing gasoline import volume by at least sixty percent! With this move; may be even Asst. Secretaries could get a Government Hybrid SUV and not consume over 100 litres of petrol a month!