Luxury cars flooded into Vietnam in June to avoid high taxes

In June alone, the number of completely built-up cars imported to Vietnam decreased by nearly 30% but the import value still increased, showing that traders rushed to import luxury cars before the tax increase on July 1.

The General Department of Customs has just announced import data for the first 6 months of the year. Accordingly, if calculated cumulatively for the first 6 months of the year, the number of imported complete vehicles decreased by more than 9% to 49,890 units. Similarly, the import value also decreased by 19.3% to more than 1.2 billion USD.

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However, the import situation in June alone had many unusual fluctuations. Specifically, the total number of cars imported to Vietnam was 8,663 - a decrease of more than 4,000 cars, about 30% compared to the previous month. However, the import turnover of these batches of cars increased by nearly 5% to nearly 248 million USD. Thus, although fewer cars were imported in June, businesses tended to import luxury cars to "avoid" high taxes.

According to regulations, from July 1, expensive cars with engine capacity from 2.5 liters will have a sharp increase in special consumption tax, the larger the capacity, the higher the tax. For cars over 6 liters, the special consumption tax will even increase by 60-150%.

June also saw a massive influx of Thai cars entering Vietnam. While 1,737 cars were imported from Korea and 1,152 from China, 2,579 cars from Thailand were imported. Thailand is also the country that has exported the most cars to Vietnam since the beginning of the year, with 15,117 cars, worth 276.5 million USD.

Ore and some other minerals were the items with the biggest increase in import volume in June - up nearly 91% compared to May, while petroleum decreased in both import volume and turnover.

According to VNE