Of cars and information

What is with September and cars?

Remember - exactly a year ago, there was a huge rush to buy cars in order to beat a supposedly impending increase in car import duty. As we all know - the duty wasn't increased. The Ministry of Finance later announced that "there is nothing going on with car sales tax". But yesterday's Kuensel story says otherwise. Except that it wasn't final and the public shouldn't have known about it.

The resulting panic-buying and rush benefited no one but the few car dealers. I did a post on this last year. The premature disclosure of the discussions within/between MoIC and MoF at that time clearly distorted the market and the spending pattern of many families and individuals.

This illustrates that we - the public institutions, banks, service providers and individuals here in Bhutan - are inefficient in safeguarding, managing and communicating information. Information can range from the ultra-sensitive like national security to personal like health conditions, and they need to be respected and protected.

And in this - I see a huge role for MoIC who has risked a repeat of what happened last year and obviously hasn't learnt from it. Anyway - brace yourself for some weeks of uncertainty, dithering and some bumpy decision making in the process.