- Tuesday, November 19, 2024
FICCI Electric Vehicle Committee Chair Sulajja Firodia Motwani said while the GST for electric vehicles is 5 per cent, it is 18 per cent for batteries and charging services
By: Shajil Kumar
ELECTRIC vehicle manufacturers have called for slashing of goods and services tax (GST) on batteries and charging services to keep the industry competitive and boost customer adoption.
At the sidelines of FICCI National Conference on EVs in New Delhi, FICCI Electric Vehicle Committee Chair Sulajja Firodia Motwani also stressed enhancing the recently launched PM E-Drive corpus to support enhanced sales of EVs.
“We would be making a recommendation to the GST Council to rationalise the GST taxation on EV-related areas,” Motwani said.
Elaborating on the demands, she noted, “Currently the GST on charging services is still 18 per cent which we would request to bring down to 5 per cent so that charging becomes more affordable to the consumers.”
Secondly, the GST on batteries should also come down to 5 per cent, Motwani said.
“While EVs attract a GST of 5 per cent, GST on batteries is 18 per cent. The request is to reduce it to 5 per cent so that when consumers buy replacement batteries, it is more affordable,” Motwani said.
Meeting that these two reforms on GST will help a lot in making EVs more competitive for the consumers, she stated.
While welcoming the PM E-Drive scheme, Motwani said that with rising demand there is a need to review the incentive amounts.
“We believe that because the demand is growing, perhaps the incentive amounts have to be reviewed so that the budget under the PM E-Drive scheme overall is enhanced to ensure that the total number of vehicles sold in the next two years are eligible for the incentive,” she stated.
She further said, “We do believe that PM E-Drive has great potential, and it will go a long way in further accelerating electric mobility.”
In October this year, the government launched the PM E-DRIVE Scheme, with an outlay of ₹109 billion (£1.02bn) for faster adoption of electric vehicles, setting up of charging infrastructure and development of EV manufacturing ecosystem in India.
The scheme shall be implemented from October 1, 2024, to March 31, 2026.
Motwani, who is also the founder and CEO of Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions, also emphasised that EVs should be part of priority sector lending.
“We do believe there’s a strong case to allow and to help having affordable financing for EVs that can make it more cost competitive for not just the classes, but for the masses,” she said.
FICCI President and Mahindra Group MD and CEO Anish Shah said electric four-wheelers currently have a 1.5 per cent penetration in India which indicates that “much work is needed”. (PTI)
