Conditions for Expatriates To Import A Customs Exempt Car

What are the terms and conditions for expatriates to be able to import a car from abroad and not pay customs? When will this decision be implemented? 

These are some of the most asked questions by the Egyptian population after the government officially approved on Wednesday 12^th of October 2022 a new law that gives Egyptian expatriates the right to import a car for their private use without paying  customs.

The law stipulates that the car must be for personal use only and will be exempted from all taxes and fees in exchange for paying a certain amount of money in hard currency which will be fully reimbursed to the car owner without interest after five years.

Find out more about the prices of handicapped cars that are exempt from customs here

The benefits of the new law

The law will help increase Egypt’s reserve of hard currency which has been a great problem for a while

5 billion USD in return!

How will Egypt benefit from this law?

The number of Egyptian expatriates ranges between 8 to 10 million people; assuming that only 5% of them will use this new law and import a car for their private use in Egypt and assuming that the amount of money that they have to pay is within $10,000 -which is a small number when compared to the actual price of the car and how much customs they would have had to pay- this means that Egypt will be able to accumulate anywhere between $2 to $5 billion.

How can this new law be abused?

• This could be a way for expatriates to make a profit off importing customs free cars which they can then sell on the Egyptian market
• The profit would come from the huge difference in prices between cars abroad and cars in Egypt

Find out more about customs: the purpose of customs & when will you have to pay them?

Conditions for importing a car exempt from customs

Every Egyptian expatriate has the right to import one car for private use that is exempted from customs and fees. Fees that they would have had to pay before for customs in order for the car to enter the country and included in these fees would be a value added tax among others.

For an expatriate to take advantage of this new law all they have to do is pay a certain amount of money (equal to the total of customs, fees, and taxes they would have had to pay before for the car to clear customs) in hard currency. 

This amount will be transferred from their account abroad to our Ministry of Finance and deposited into a specific account. The amount will be redeemed after five years in Egyptian currency.

One of the conditions for importing a car without customs is that the expatriate must have a valid residency card in a country abroad at the time they are paying the fees

Other conditions

The car owner must be at least 16 years old

They must have a bank account abroad that is at least three months old.Exempted from this condition are spouses for Egyptian expatriates and their children as long as the other conditions are met.

Note that if the car is used then it cannot be older than three years

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When will this new law be implemented?

The Council of Ministers will issue within two weeks the entire law and attached will be an index with all the required fees and accepted currencies according to each car category and its origin.

Once the law goes into effect, expats have four months to transfer the money to the ministry of finance. They then have a year to import their car of choice to Egypt.

To benefit from this law you will have to

Register your data, the car’s information, and pay the agreed upon and specified amount. Once all this is done you will receive approval showing that you have paid and will also include the car’s specifications.

This approval will be completely valid for one year during which you can import the car to Egypt. 

Note that

In case you do not import the car within a year the entire amount will be returned to you in the same currency without interest.