Talking to APP he said that the decision may annoy the old car dealers, but it would give some relief to local automobile assemblers.

Bakhtawri said the government acted decisively in the greater national interest and the industry would continue to uphold `customer comes first' philosophy in line with our vision.

It is pertinent to mention here that back in 2008 the government had cut down the age limit of imported used cars to 3 from 5 years. Consequently, this would bring down the share of imported cars in the market to 6 percent from 17 percent.

However, later in 2010 the government pulled the age limit back to the previous level in order to force assemblers to slash prices of locally assembled cars.