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Pakistan has, since the early 2000s, effectively barred commercial (dealer) import of used vehicles — the only legal route for used-vehicle imports has been the non-commercial personal-baggage, gift and transfer-of-residence schemes (each capped, one-vehicle-per-person). This action does two things simultaneously: it opens a new commercial import channel for used vehicles under PCT headings 8702 (buses/coaches), 8703 (cars), 8704 (goods vehicles) and 8711 (motorcycles) — capped at under-five-years-old — and it protects domestic assemblers (Indus Motor/Toyota, Pak Suzuki, Honda Atlas, and the newer Chinese-JV entrants) from the resulting import competition by layering a 40% RD on top of existing customs duty, sales tax and withholding tax.
The sequencing is: ECC approval (18 Sep 2025) → federal cabinet ratification → Ministry of Commerce import-policy SRO 1895(I)/2025 (30 Sep 2025, opens the channel) → FBR fiscal SRO 1898(I)/2025 (1 Oct 2025, sets the 40% RD). The published Tariff Policy Board schedule steps the RD down 10 points/year starting after 30 June 2026, reaching zero in FY2029-30 — i.e. the protective wall is designed to be temporary and self-liquidating, giving domestic assemblers a multi-year adjustment runway before full used-import competition.
This sits in tension with Pakistan's National Tariff Policy 2025-30 (2025-07-01-pakistan-national-tariff-policy-2025-30), whose headline commitment is to reduce the maximum RD rate economy-wide (from 90% to 50% in its first phase, trending to zero by FY2029-30). SRO 1898 is a new, sector-specific 40% RD layered on a previously-prohibited import category rather than a rate on an existing tariff line, so it is not a breach of the NTP's line-by-line RD-reduction schedule, but it illustrates how Islamabad is using RD authority to manage market-opening pace even while the umbrella policy commits to RD elimination.
markets) once the 40% wall starts stepping down after mid-2026 — a slow-motion opening rather than an immediate one.
at least FY2026-27; the phase-down schedule gives assemblers (and their JV/CKD partners, increasingly Chinese EV/ICE brands) a defined multi-year window to adjust.
barrier alongside the RD — worth watching for de facto restrictiveness independent of the headline duty rate.
a newly-opened category with no import history to benchmark against.
regime has a history of ad hoc revision under fiscal pressure).
affected-country tagging on this record — China, France, Germany — likely reflects its standard partner-country heuristic rather than confirmed trade-flow data, since Japan is the dominant global RHD used-vehicle exporter).