Morocco and its Import System
respecting local regulations is one of the most importing things to consider by an import business owner. The kingdom of Morocco is one of the new Emerging economies in Africa. And it is growing more and more with time. When it comes to import Business, the country has many regulations and strict customs. The department of Moroccan customs have in fact a full control on all the good imported to the country for a commercial purpose. Although Morocco suffers from corruption, almost no body can overcome the laws when it comes to importing. Furthermore, Morocco regulates all and every import to make sure none of the banned products gets in the country. Recreational drones for example are banned from the country just a short time ago for privacy purposes. And no one can now import any more drones, not even for personal use. The conclusion is, for an import to own his own import business, he needs make sure that all the products imported are in fact legal in the country and should be willing to pay all the dues to fulfill the country’s regulations.
The Customs Exemptions
There are some exemptions to import products free of tax but that is for a very small scale and isn’t the way a whole business work. Roman Blanco explains in his article, Important customs procedures in Morocco, Standertrade.com “For free imports, the importer must sign a commitment for imports on form “Commitment for Import, Import license, Preliminary Import Declaration”. The Commitment for Import must be drawn up in 5 specimens and accompanied by a proforma invoice in 5 copies specifying: the unit price expressed in ex-works value, FOB, FAS; quantity expressed in units of appropriate measures; trade description of the goods.” In fact, there is a lot more paper work to go through the procedure to benefit from this free import.
Legality and Advantage of the Products
The Moroccan government as almost every government strictly controls its borders, and when we say borders, we include imports and exports. It is really important to understand all the tax regulations and the legality of products imported to own an import business. Custom taxes can sometimes be expensive and it might be really hard to run this kind of business if the person can’t deal with all the outside influences on the business, like concurrence witch can make it difficult to sell the product you already imported and paid a lot of money for. Whit that said, the import of photography equipment is definitely legal but there is still a Custom tax.
The positive thing about this business is that there is a very little concurrence. It of course also depends on what equipment the company imports, if it’s importing the popular equipment that already exist in the market, then it will be hard to deal with the concurrence. But where the company is gaining popularity is by importing equipment that people can’t find somewhere else unless they import them themselves, and as we’ve seen already, is has to go through many procedure. People will then just chose the easier way, which is to just buy directly from the company.
Source:
Blanco R, “import customs procedures in Morocco” santandertrade, March 2015, Web, 5 march 2015.
photography import 