Good news for prospective future owners of big bikes, as the Government has decided to reduce the import duty on all of them.
The Government of India has announced a reduction in import duty in the 2025-26 Union Budget for motorcycles for all three forms they may be imported in–completely built units (CBUs) as well as semi-knocked down (SKD) and completely knocked down (CKD) kits.
There are two different slabs of import duty on motorcycles—one for motorcycles with less than 1,600-cc engine capacity and another for motorcycles with engines displacing more than 1,600 cc.
For motorcycles belonging to the former group, the import duty on CBUs has been reduced from 50 to 40 per cent; for SKD units, it has decreased from 25 to 20 per cent; and CKD units will attract only 10 per cent import duty as against the 15 per cent it was previously.
As for larger motorcycles with an engine capacity of 1,600 cc or more, the duty reduction is much more for CBUs, dropping from 50 to 30 per cent. SKD units will see the same reduction as the sub-1,600-cc motorcycles, from 25 to 20 per cent; and the reduction for the CKD units sees a drop of five per cent from 15 to 10 per cent.
Yamaha Motor India may have heard through the grapevine about this imminent reduction, as they slashed the prices of their 320-cc parallel-twin models by a huge amount, Rs 1.1 lakh to be exact, citing their eagerness to meet customer expectations. Other CKD and SKD bikes should see a reduction in price as well soon enough. At least that’s something Indian motorcyclists can hope for in the near future.
We have come a long way from the days of trade treaties where we were trying to procure Harley-Davidson motorcycles in exchange for mangoes, which has resulted in the engine capacity divide to begin with, but the future of imported motorcycles in the premium middleweight segment may be quite bright on our shores.
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