Brazil: Pernambuco’s Government announced tax exemption for CNG taxis

The benefit will be applied on a daily fee of up to 20 m3 of CNG filling, enough to cover 200 kilometers, the average distance a taxi driver meets per day in the state’s capital city, Recife. Furthermore, the same day Fiat introduced its brand new Grand Siena Tetrafuel model, with a special discount of 13.5% on vehicle purchase for taxi drivers.

The meeting brought together officials, Fiat and Copergás executives and the state’s Taxi Drivers’ Union members and was held in the Convention Center of Pernambuco, which is the government’s temporary seat. Drivers were invited to get more information about the program which seeks to encourage conversions to CNG.

“Today we save nearly 60 percent in fuel consumption using natural gas, a figure that will increase with this discount,” said Everaldo Menezes, president of the Taxi Drivers’ Union, who added that, during the past two years throughout the state, number of CNG conversion kit orders from taxi drivers have tripled.

Currently, 10,000 taxis operate on Pernambuco’s routes, 3,500 of which are CNG powered vehicles. As a result, the state is ranked fourth in the national largest natural gas taxi fleets list, after São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.