Does anyone know a website listing used cars?
Last activity 19 March 2013 by Shipside Tax Free Cars
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Welcome on board Y61 
Wow, you message is very technical! And I hope that other members will be able to comment on this soon.
Regards
One more thing you forgot to mention. The tax authorities make their own estimations of the price you paid to buy the used car (which often ends up being much more than what you actually paid for the purchase). They rarely accept receipts as they want to prevent undervaluation of the purchase price for tax purposes. In any case, you'll end up paying whichever of the two prices(their estimation or your receipt) is the highest.
So in your example above, you need to take that into account. You may have purchased your car at 5,000$ but they might estimate it at 6 or even 7,000$. I'll let you figure out the taxes 
I personally haven't driven these cars, but two of my friends have bought different models. One bought a DOCC (the first model of Holland Cars, no longer available) about 2 years ago ... the car may not be very attractive aesthetically but he told me that there were no major problems he encountered other than the lack of some spare parts (due to lack of foreign currency)! The other friend just bought a Lifan 520 last January, so no problems yet. These cars have not been on the road that long so it might be too soon to identify major technical problems. If I were living there, I would also probably end up buying one of those cars.
Otherwise, we don't disagree too much on the "high duties [don't]protect the local market and create jobs" discussion. No one is questioning the benefits of mobility on the local economy. As a consumer, i would have liked to have the choice to buy used cars of good quality and pay a reasonable tax. Competition is also healthy for the economy, no doubt.
But I wouldn't want the country to be a dumping ground for used foreign cars. Not just for long-term economic reasons, but also for environmental ones. Today, most of the cars you find in the streets in Ethiopia were manufactured at least 20 years ago ... these gas guzzlers pollute the environment, as you'll soon see for yourself.
And to be frank, I don't see the reason why a 2nd-hand owner of brand cars in a developing country such as Ethiopia should be tied to importing spare parts from the developed world. The big brand auto industries are (understandably) very protective of sharing their technology to the rest of the world in such a way that the average poor country can in no way produce the replacement parts locally (not only due to lack of know-how but because of property rights). This, for me, is giving the consumer no option. Not only will this mean taking away potential jobs from the poor country, but it will sustain the huge gap between the two worlds. There is nothing cynical about wanting to create jobs locally instead of financing the job of highly-paid workers in the developed world. And as you know, even a few thousand new jobs make a difference both to the workers and their extended families at large - why else would auto workers' trade unions in the developed world make headlines with their strikes.
From an economic point of view, improving the quality and encouraging competition are useful at a later point in time, not 3 years after the first car assembly plant in the country starts production. The country can and should open up to competition after it has built up its own local capacity (human resource, technology, infrastructure...). I am not referring to Chinese cars assembled in Ethiopia here, but cars fully owned and manufactured locally in the near future.
Until then, the government should help local investors, by even temporarily subsidizing them. With over 80 million people in the country, local production should be encouraged and local market should be protected for a while. How else do you expect local companies to compete against auto giants like General Motors for instance - companies which incidentally received billion of $ as bailout from their governments.
Besides, it's not like there are no choices today. For the individual who can only afford a 300$ used-car, perhaps public transportation is the answer (both for economic and environmental reasons); developing public transportation is less expensive for the government also in the long-run. For the consumer who insists on quality, the person still has a choice today of paying 590% the original price in taxes
To cut a long story short, the short-term economic gains from allowing used European/American/Japanese cars into the country at low taxes is not reason enough to forego more substantial long-term benefits for the country as a whole. As they say, 'Rome was not built in one day'. If the experience of emerging economies (China, India or the Asian tigers ...) is anything to go by, protecting local markets (and jobs) before opening up for competition is essential. Yes the pill is hard to swallow for us consumers, but it must be swallowed to bring positive and fundamental changes to the car market in Ethiopia.
Just my two cents
Hello alexanv,
You explained very well... Brilliant contribution! 
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