Owner of Jetcon Corporation and a member of the Jamaica Used Car Dealers Association, Andrew Jackson, responds to Observer columnist Keith Collister’s take on used vehicles, import dutes, gas pricing and the environment, published in last Sunday’s edition of the newspaper.

I would like to make a few comments about the article in Sunday’s paper by Keith Collister : How lower duties on cars can aid energy conservation and help the environment.

I agree with most of the ideas in this article. Over the years government has chosen to put most of the cost of ownership on the acquisition of a car and kept it low on the operation of the cars, hence we have ultra high import duties and relatively low fuel prices and registration fees. This bias against acquisition has forced consumers to keep cars for longer periods and there is less incentive to acquire more fuel efficient models. Furthermore high import duties increase financing costs as well as insurance costs, thus making it prudent for owners to keep cars mush longer than efficiency would dictate.

However, it is incorrect to suggest that the importation of used cars automatically ages our fleet — quite the opposite. If the average age of the existing fleet is higher than the age of the cars been imported then the imported used cars reduce the age of the fleet NOT increase it, that is simple mathematics.

Obviously new cars will improve the fleet age at a better rate, but it is not correct to suggest that imported used cars increase the age of the fleet unless it can be shown that the average age of the fleet is less that the age of imported used cars. I don’t think this is so.

The assumption that new cars are intrinsically more efficient than imported used cars is not correct. This would be true in a perfect market but the reality is different. Generally car manufacturers introduce newer, more fuel-efficient technologies in their home markets before exporting, particularly to our region. Our Region, Latin America and Africa are usually the last to receive the newest technologies, and therefore four and five-year-old cars in Japan, for example, employ newer technologies than their new counterparts exported to our markets. The most obvious examples are hybrid and common rail diesel. These have been available for several years in Japan but still not yet available in Jamaica.

In fact, one of the big attraction to imported used cars over the past 15 years has been the newer technologies and features which these cars employ. Many customers preferred these cars to new cars because of the advanced technologies these cars had, not just the price. The used car industry was a game changer in terms of customer expectations, power windows, power mirrors, automatic transmission, electronic fuel injection, catalytic converter, air condition became standard, and in some cases it took the new car industry years to catch up.

Here is a list of technologies which new cars available in Jamaica have lagged their used imported equivalent : CVT transmission, electric power steering, ABS, SRS, hybrid, electric cars, clean diesel, direct injection, fly by wire throttle control, catalytic converters, variable valve timing, ULEV, and there are more.

Again, I support the idea that import duties should be reduced and balanced with operating costs, such as fuel taxes and road taxes as this would have the effect of encouraging the purchase of more efficient cars and discourage the excessive driving. After all it is not the ownership of cars that causes pollution, it is the use of itm and this is where taxation policy should be focused. A formula could be worked out that could actually increase government revenue while reducing pollution.