Car loan limits to go up: Watchdog

ISTANBUL

Mehmet Ali Akben, the head of the Turkish banking watchdog, has said that loan limits for locally produced automobiles will be expanded in the upcoming months.

The Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency chair said in a televised interview late on Feb. 3: “There’s a range that we want to provide incentives. We want to provide efficiency to the locally-produced vehicles rather than imported vehicles.”

Last month, the number of special consumption tax (SCT) bands for automobiles with an engine displacement of below 1,600 cubic centimeters (cc) has been increased from three to five, lowering tax base limits for some locally-produced car models.

For conventional cars, the upper tax base limit where an SCT of 45 percent is applied has been raised from 92,000 Turkish Liras ($6,765) to 120,000 liras ($8,820).

For cars priced above 200,000 liras, an SCT of 80 percent is being applied.

Akben also said that before Turkey’s Automobile Joint Venture Group (TOGG) starts mass production, a new automotive loan package could be introduced by lenders.

Electric cars produced by TOGG are expected to hit the roads in 2022, two years before being exported to European markets.

Car and light commercial vehicle sales decreased 4.6 percent to 737,350 in 2021, according to the Automotive Distributors Association (ODD).