Maruti Suzuki announces price hike across the range

Maruti Suzuki cars to get dearer in light of the recently announced infrastructure cess on new cars. Ciaz SHVS and Ertiga SHVS models are exempt from the price revisions. 

In view of the recently announced Union Budget 2016-17, Maruti Suzuki has increased the prices of its cars by Rs 1,441 to Rs 34,494 across the range. The increase in prices comes thanks to the additional infrastructure cess that will be levied on new cars. The Ciaz SHVS and Ertiga SHVS are exempt from the price increase since they come under the hybrid cars category as per the government, and therefore, incur no additional taxes.

Maruti Suzuki has not specified the price hike for individual models but, it’s understood that the Alto will be the least affected from the hike, while it will gradually increase for the models above. The S-Cross will be hit the hardest since it’ll attract a higher infrastructure cess because of various other factors (price, length and engine size). The revisions in pricing also apply to all the CNG/LPG variants.

The move to introduce infrastructure tax will benefit the Ciaz SHVS and Ertiga SHVS a great deal though. Since none of their rivals come with a similar technology, they are all likely to get dearer in the coming few days. That makes both these cars great value for money, and will definitely help push sales. Also, this will encourage other manufacturers to adopt these fuel/environmental saving technologies in their cars, however small the real-world benefits be.

Earlier, Mercedes-Benz also announced the price revisions across its models citing the same reason. Expect more manufacturers to follow the suit and announce price hikes for their respective models.

Also read: Union Budget 2016 – 17: Passenger vehicles to get more expensive