Car shipping- Is it worth to bring our car to Mauritius?

Hello move2015 and welcome to Expat.com

Please note that your thread has been moved to the Mauritius forum to help you get interactions.

You may check out some threads in our Cars Mauritius, Transportation in Mauritius section of the site to gather some infos.

Kenjee

Hello move2015,

Though it appears that you haven't mentioned from which country, I am posting the below scenario in case it could be of help to you:

"Before moving to Mauritius we lived in the UK, where the price of everything is a click away on the Internet. For example, our 2003 Citroën Xsara Picasso was valued at £2,400 (or Rs 120,000) by Parkers (http://www.parkers.co.uk/cars/used-prices/). Relative to Mauritius, cars are cheap in Europe. Unfortunately doing research on the cost of cars in Mauritius is not such an easy exercise.

The shippers told us that exporting our car would add only £500 to the total shipping cost. Once a car arrives in Mauritius, it is valued by Customs whereupon import duties and VAT are applied to that valuation. In our case it was:
- Rs 240,000 (Customs' valuation of the car - note that it is almost twice the UK Parkers value)
Therefore, Customs duties and taxes levied were:
- Rs 132,000 (55% import duty)
- Rs 56,000 (15% of Rs 372,000, being the value plus import duty)
- Rs 54,000 (first registration and road tax)
= total of Rs 242,000 paid (vs. a car that is worth Rs 120,000 in the UK)

Then again, a small second-hand city car costs in excess of Rs 400,000 from dealers in Mauritius. Chances are that we would have ended up with one of those if we did not import ours from the UK. Alternatively, it would have taken a lot of money, time and effort to find the same type of car as the Citroën. To rent a small car costs around Rs 25,000 per month, so you also need to add that to the total cost of importation.

There are administrative issues to be aware of. Even if your clearing agent has all the paperwork in place the clearing process will only commence upon physical arrival of the car. The Mauritian authorities will then contact the origin country's authorities to ascertain that the car is not stolen. Seemingly such requests are processed quickly in the UK. Our car was released 20 days following delivery of the container although we have heard that cars originating from certain countries (including South Africa) can take substantially longer to clear. Also, the Mauritian authorities will issue you initially with a temporary licence as the permanent version can only be obtained once the car is insured. Unfortunately the temporary licence is valid for three days only and as the insurance process takes longer than this, we had to apply for a second temporary licence which meant another trip to Port Louis. In the process we also discovered that under a temporary licence you are not allowed to transport passengers (a bit tricky if you have to do the school run) or use the vehicle at all on Sundays.

Manual second-hand cars are difficult to come by in Mauritius. Pretty much all second-hand cars are imported from Japan where vehicles tend to have automatic transmissions. Ultimately the choice of cars is limited if you are looking for value for money. Double-cab trucks/bakkies incur only 10% import duty. It seems that many expat families end up with a double-cab and a little Nissan, a good barometer of value for money in Mauritius. Only ship your car over if your car if you have a special reason or a double cab. It is touch-and-go whether it is worth the money and effort to import a 'conventional' car.

Also note that cars (not trucks/bakkies) with engines larger than 1,600cc attract 100% import duty."

I imported my DIESEL Renault Scenic this year from the UK and actually got a reduction in the Import Duty because the car was fairly new and it met the higher CO2 emissions of Europe.  I believe that imported cars have to be inspected as well at Cassis before a plate can be issued.  So another journey in those three licence days. The inspection checks the Brake Horse Power of the vehicle as this is what is put into the licence documents in Mauritius i.e. mauritius log-book.

You also have to get a registration number from the NTC in Port Louis and Cassis ( to pay the car tax) for the car and then get some new number plates made as well.  OF course to get the car released you have to have insurance for the vehicle so this tends to be done on the chassis number first , then you need to get the registration number to the insurance company asap after getting the registration number as they can issue you your important VIGNETTE for the tax holder in the car.  You will find that on a random stop by the Police or otherwise the insurance vignette is one of the first things they look for.