Sri Lanka's ordinary citizens have to pay a series of prohibitive taxes including import duty, excise duty, and value added tax which more than doubles the price of a car.
According to the applications processed so far 200 Mitsubishi Montero luxury sports utility vehicles, 800 sub compact cars including Mitsubishi Lancers and 200 smaller Suzuki cars are to be imported.
Most of the 200 luxury SUVs have been ordered by doctors, the finance ministry source said.
Another 5,000 applications were waiting to be processed.
Senior government servants can import vehicles valued between eight hundred thousand rupees to 4.2 million rupees under the scheme.
A vehicle with 1300 cc engine capacity could have a maximum CIF value of 11,500 dollars.
However some state workers have