Bangladesh, Laos and Cambodia
drop new-energy tariffs.

Bangladesh made the biggest change of any country in the region, in its budget for 2026–27.

Solar first. All four import taxes on solar equipment — import duty, regulatory duty, supplementary duty and advance tax — dropped to zero. On the core equipment they stay at zero until 30 June 2031. But the relief on mounting structures, lithium cells and battery packs runs only to June 2028, which is a different planning horizon entirely. Before this, the combined charge on solar equipment reached about 59 percent.

The cut is wide: solar modules, inverters, steel and aluminium mounting structures, lithium-ion cells and battery packs, and battery housing. Check your own line against the gazette — the published lists name specific items, not "solar equipment" as a class. And companies that build solar power plants pay no income tax on earnings accrued until 30 June 2035.

Vehicles too. From July 2026 through June 2030, electric buses and trucks come in duty-free — though VAT still applies — while taxes on gasoline and diesel vehicles went up, to roughly 156 percent on 1,200–1,600cc engines. Chargers and charging-station equipment went from 39.75 percent to zero. Brand-new plug-in hybrids up to 1,800cc get less than a clean exemption: supplementary duty reduced, regulatory duty withdrawn. Raw materials for making lithium and sodium batteries locally are also covered.

Laos didn't cut taxes. It banned the competition.

From June to the end of December 2026, you cannot import a gasoline or diesel passenger car into Laos at all. There are exceptions — buses, machinery, trucks for development projects, special-purpose vehicles — but ordinary cars are blocked. The ban lands exactly on the segment where affordable electric alternatives already exist.

The rewards are just as direct. Electric vehicles under $50,000 pay no excise tax. Registration is cheaper. Transport companies must make at least 10 percent of their fleets electric by the end of 2026. The national goal is 30 percent of all vehicles by 2030.

The country is building the infrastructure at the same time: in April, the government signed up 27 public and private partners to build charging stations, battery-swap points, a shared digital platform and financing products. The logic is simple. Laos makes almost all of its electricity from its own dams, but pays scarce foreign currency for fuel. Every electric vehicle turns an import bill into local business.

Cambodia moved fast. A decree signed on March 26 took effect on April 1.

Chargers and solar lamps: 7 percent tax, now zero. EV motors, solar systems, lithium batteries, storage: 15 percent, now zero. Another 179 product lines — hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric cars and trucks — also went to zero. Some plug-in hybrid family cars dropped from 35 percent tax to 7.

But keep the market in view. As of February, only about 14,500 of Cambodia's 8.3 million registered vehicles were electric. A new EV costs around $29,000. A new gasoline car costs about $16,000, and a used one $6,500. And there are still very few places to charge.

Thailand is moving the other way — and if you assume “Southeast Asia is opening up”, you will get Thailand wrong.

The rules now push hard toward local factories. For every EV a company imports in 2026, it must build two in Thailand. In 2027, three. And from Jan. 1, 2026, no more than 10 percent of an EV's factory price can come from imported battery cells — down from 15.

Fully electric cars still get a low 2 percent excise tax, down from 8. Plug-in hybrids are taxed by how far they go on electricity alone: 5 percent if they manage 80 kilometers or more, 10 percent if less. Ordinary and mild hybrids are not in that scheme at all — they are still taxed on emissions, so do not price them off the range table. A vehicle trade-in program floated in April was shelved by the finance ministry in June; a replacement is being drawn up, so do not build a forecast on it yet.

Indonesia closed the door the others opened.

Through Dec. 31, 2025, you could import a fully built EV with no import duty, no luxury tax and almost no VAT. All of that is gone. From Jan. 1, 2026, the tax breaks only go to EVs built or assembled in Indonesia with at least 40 percent local content.

And the bar keeps rising faster than most plans assume: 40 percent local content from 2026, 60 percent across 2027–2028, 80 percent by 2030. Companies that promise to build locally and fail must pay back the taxes they were spared — and get smaller import quotas afterward.

Three things follow from all this.

1. 01

   This is not one story. Bangladesh, Cambodia and Laos welcome imports today. Thailand and Indonesia welcome factories and punish imports. A plan built for one half of the region fails in the other half.

2. 02

   The hard part has moved. For a decade, taxes were the reason clean energy cost too much in these countries. In three of the five, that is over. What is scarce now is chargers, financing and distribution — working capital for importers, and sales channels that reach the people who actually run vehicles. That is a harder problem than a tax table. It is also where the money is.

3. 03

   These doors have closing dates. The Lao import ban runs to the end of 2026. Thailand's imported-cell allowance ends June 30, 2026. Bangladesh's vehicle waiver runs to 2030 and its core solar waiver to 2031 — but the relief on mounting structures, lithium cells and battery packs stops in June 2028. Policy here changes fast in both directions, and several of these deadlines exist precisely to make people move now.