Barna Tanczos, the Minister of Environment, considers that the Romanian state should support with a certain amount of money the handing over of the cars older than 15 years.
The scrapping program of old vehicles “We value your scrap”, initiated in April of this year by Sfântu Gheorghe City Hall seems to have inspired Barna Tanczos, the interim Minister of Environment, Waters and Forests, Barna Tanczos.
He stated today that the Romanian state should financially support the handing over of scrap cars older than 15 years, and the beneficiaries should commit that they will no longer buy and register cars as old and will use those amounts, if they want, buy new less polluting cars.
“In PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan, no.), Romania has committed to reduce the number of cars older than 15 years. Until we have a government that takes this decision, it would be premature, as interim minister, for me to come up with a solution. My proposal is the same one I have said several times. The state should come to support the handing over of these cars older than 15 years with a certain amount of money. In parallel, to make it possible to increase local taxes for old and polluting cars, so that there is not only coercion, but also real support from the Romanian state and a commitment from those who hand over these old cars that they will not buy and they will no longer register vehicles older than 15 years and will use the respective amounts, if they wish, to buy less polluting cars, new ”, explained Barna Tanczos, Minister of Environment.
The minister’s idea is not at all a novelty for those who know the program initiated by the mayor’s office from Sfântu Gheorghe in the spring of this year. Named “We value your scrap metal”, it became operational in April this year and, by the end of September, generated the submission of 400 applications from residents of the city.
Through this program, the town hall of Sfântu Gheorghe offers 3,000 lei in exchange for vehicles handed over to scrap metal, provided that the owners agree that in the next three years they will not purchase a car older than five years. In less than six months, 437 applications were submitted, of which 396 were approved, the rest being rejected because they did not meet the eligibility conditions.
The initial budget of the program was one million lei, but it was supplemented with another 600,000 lei in order to be able to honor several requests.
The mayor of Sfântu Gheorghe, Antal Arpad, declared in September that applications can still be submitted and estimates that by the end of the year, about 500 old vehicles will be taken out of circulation. He believed that the program could be successfully extended nationwide.
Data from the Royal Directorate of Driving Permits and Vehicle Registration (DRPCIV) show that while the market for new cars increased in the first ten months by only 0.8%, to 97,870 cars, that of used vehicles rose by 8% to 338,241 units.
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