Costa Rica Shipping – We have know that this day was coming but the Costa Rican government has kept us in the dark to when the actual policy will be implemented.
Over the past 5 months when talking to people thinking about relocating to Costa Rica or moving their belongings down to furnish their new Costa Rica house or villa, they have all been talking about the same thing.
“We heard that you cannot ship a vehicle into Costa Rica over 15 years old”. or “A guy in Costa Rica said that older cars cannot be shipped to Costa Rica now.” Of course each time I had to confirm with customs to see if the policy was in place as of yet. Each and every time they said not yet, there are no restrictions on shipping a vehicle to Costa Rica.
Well now those times are changing and there was no forewarning on this implementation of this Costa Rica shipping restriction.
Port to Port sent an email this morning talking about the change.
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“Estimado cliente, le comunicamos que a partir de Julio 1ro-2018, en Costa Rica no se estará permitiendo el ingreso de vehículos con 12 años o más de fabricación; una vez sea recibido el decreto por parte del país, se lo estaremos enviando.
Favor tomar en cuenta que no podemos recibir vehículos con 12 o más años de fabricación para embarcar hacia este destino, para evitarle el riesgo de que no pueda retirarlo de la Almacenadora.”
A summary of this email is as of July 1st 2018 Costa Rica will no longer permit the entry of vehicles 12 years older or more into the country. Once they receive the official declaration they will send it out. We no longer will accept vehicles 12 years or older that are to be shipped to this destination because of the risk of you not being able to retrieve it from the fiscal warehouse.
So for anyone that wanted an update on this policy….here it is. You will need to either ship a newer vehicle to Costa Rica or just hope that one you buy in Costa Rica does not have any issues.
