Wishful thinking & horror stories
The answers to your last two questions are ?yes?, and ?no?. But it may not be in that order, uh... well, umm...it could be ?no? and ?yes?? oh heck.
Onto a more serious note, the price or cars (and almost anything) will go up for a simple reason: people had been sub-valuating the price declares to customs for duty and tax purposes. In the present people are supposed to declare the correct value. Now, now, isn?t that a lot of wishful thinking? I will tell you reality: The few people who were legit will continue to be so, the rest will not. But since business people only need a faint excuse to raise the prices GATT provides them with a good one.
GATT is a scheme made up by the WTO to insure that the world?s biggest manufacturers and exporters (rich country) could get easy access to the poor countries when the last could not by means of higher duties control the import of certain goods. Of course that is not the official word, but you and I know better. The problem with this is that most poor countries have problems collecting income taxes so they have to work it another way, collecting duties is very much easier and it makes a high percentage of the country?s income. In our case the plan was to lower the duties to a minimum and raise the ITBIS so the government could compensate the loss of income. That was not meant to be, as Hippy saw the economy blow to smithereens he could not afford to lower any more taxes. But that?s another horror story.
