xXx, thanks for enlightening us from a different perspective, one that we often miss out. Just to add my 2 cents into this; Sri Lanka's economy is deteriorating at an alarming rate, say from about 3 years now. It has been deteriorating gradually, but now the rate has increased. Global recession situation has accelerated and amplified the effect even more.
Sri Lanka has long been in trouble when it comes to foreign reserves, which allows us the capacity to buy from foreign countries. Historically, SL kept foreign reserves sufficient for 6 months imports. But, this limit could not be maintained due to our high import to export ratio. Main contributors for this are the industrial imports and vehicle imports. If you look at the CB report a massive figure is spent on importing industrial raw materials. Since limiting industrial imports is a like suicide to the economy, government tried to discourage vehicle imports by jacking up the taxes.
IMHO, government is applying medicine to the foot, where the wound is in the head.
Idiotic politicos do not see that all everyone is trying to arrange their personal transport (hence, high demand for the imported personal vehicles) simply because the public transport is PIECE OF CRAP!!! So the culprit for initiating all these problems is the transport authorities who still keeps silent.