Hi Just an update on bringing a car from the UK/Europe as I am now taking my new car back hopefully I can already the experienced a great loss of time on this subject not to mention money.
This was a very sorry escapade and is the only bad experience I have had trying to work in Tunisia as an investor.
With all things inport speak to the Douane first and ignore other agencies as you will be dealing with them and they say yes or no.
Tell them what you plan to do and get them to agree before you bring the car as rules change and training/knowledge is not good even of their own processes.
If you find some of this incorrect please feel free to offer what you know :-)
Bringing a car in as an individual:
If you are an expat Tunisian and you have been away from Tunisia for over 2 years and under a certain amount of time you can have.
RS: a plate which allows you to have a car in Tunisia and allows you to sell the car to another rs person.
FCR: Import a car and pay tax on it in the range of 18% percent you are allowed one of these. Car will have Tunisian plates.
Somtimes you will get people offering to sell this (illegal) and this is not advised as they will need to import the car in their name and the car will be theirs for its life until sold to another FCR
Bringing in a Car as a foreign investor
If you read the FIPA do***entation as I did ask them and speak to the customs. You will be told that bringing your car is easy allowing you the pleasure of creating jobs in Tunisia. Alas it is not really easy and you need to have.
- A commercial enterprise: Not a internet company or service company. This means somthing easy for the customs to understand like a factory etc.
- Approval from the API: The promotion of industry government body forms to be filled in etc.
- Approval from the Douane: Yes approval again and they can also say no if they like.
So fo me I made the following mistakes I am not offshore nor am I a factory so in their eyes the largest tourism website about tunisia with over 50,000 potential customers for Tunisia is less worthly than a shoe factory and thus I have had zero help at all from anyone aside from Expat Solutions who I pay.
My advice is either if your husband is an expat then no problem FCR but if an investor pay somone to do the papers before you come in the car and have a Tunisian car if at all possible as the upside of this that Tunisian cars at the moment deprecieate much more slowly than imported cars (tunisian numberplate).
Sorry for a bit of a rant but I hope my expensive mistakes help others.
I love Tunisia but you shouldn't have to work 6 months to ge a no.