BMW hikes prices by 3-5.5% from Apr; launches skilling prog

The second largest luxury car maker, BMW India, today announced a 3-5.5 per cent hike in prices across its models from April following the import duty hike on spare parts.

As part of its 11th year anniversary of its manufacturing plant in Chennai, the company today also unveiled a skilling initiative across engineering colleges and other technical institutes like ITIs across the country under which it hopes to train "tens of thousands of students over the next few years".

"Our prices will go up by an average 3 per cent to a maximum of 5.5 per cent depending on the model. This is to reflect the import duty hike in the budget on CKDs," Vikram Pawah, the president of BMW Group India said here flanked by the company's brand ambassador Sachin Tendulkar after announcing skilling initiative called Skill Next.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley had in 2018-19 budget increased the custom duty on CKD (completely knocked down) imports from 10 per cent to 15 per cent.

The company, which has invested over Rs 1,250 crore in the country since 2007, completed 11 years of manufacturing operations here today, while its parent turned 100 three days ago.

The plant makes eight models and the ninth one, Mini Cooper Countryman, will be rolled out in June. It's eighth model, X3, was rolled out on the centenary celebrations of its parent three days ago. Its other locally made models include the 3,5, and 7 series apart from X1, X3 and X5 series.

BMW models range from a low Rs 30 lakh to over Rs 2 crore in the country due to high import duty, which runs up to 130 per cent.

Explaining the rationale for the CSR initiative, under which the company has also registered a foundation, Pawah said, "The next phase of growth in luxury car market will come from the small towns. And that means we need tens of hundreds of trained manpower in those markets. I hope the Skill Next will go a big way in meeting those requirements."