Warehouses Under Tunisian New Customs Code

Pursuant to the Article 166 of the New Customs Code, the regime of customs warehouse allows to the Companies to put the goods and equipment for a fixed period in places subject to the customs approval and control.

The Company shall introduce a request to the Customs services in order to exploit a customs warehouse including all necessary indications related to the Company and the equipment and notably those establishing a real economic need for storage and warehousing. 

The warehousing is subject to an approval (authorization) which determines the operating conditions of the warehouse.

The goods admitted in customs warehouses are as following:

- The goods (or equipments), subject to customs duties, taxes or prohibitions at the importation.

- The goods (or equipments) formerly constituted under a suspensive regime or other privileged customs regime within the framework of customs regulation, and awaiting to re-export or to allocate them in any other permitted customs regime. 

 According to the provisions of Article 170 of the New Customs Code, the warehousing of the goods and equipment suspend the taxes and customs fees.

The Company has the choice between two types of customs warehouses: The public warehouse and private warehouse:

• Public warehouse

 The public warehouse is open to any person or Company for the storage of goods and equipments of all kinds. It is conceded by decree to municipalities or companies with public participation. The Company can put his rigs in a public warehouse under constant surveillance of customs against the payment of warehousing costs.

Please note that according to the provisions of Article 177 of the New Customs Code, the maximum stay of goods is set at five (05) years for public warehouses and three (03) years for special public warehouses (specially equipped by the State to receive dangerous items or goods requiring special facilities)

• Private warehouses (formerly named bonded warehouses)

 The private warehouse is granted:

-          to Companies whose purpose is the storage of goods for the benefit of others,

-          to industrial or commercial Companies for their exclusive use.

 Accordingly, the Company can rent a warehouse or use its own warehouse.

The equipment can stay in private warehouse for two (02) years, however, the Director General of Customs may, in exceptional circumstances, extend this deadline at the Company’ request.

Further to the provisions of Article 186 of the new Customs Code, the Customs officers may perform any operation of inspection, control and identification of the goods and tools at the warehouse at any time.

Please note that during the stay of the rigs in the warehouse, the Company can perform maintenance or repairing operations. If the Company want to remove the rigs from the warehouse for repairing; it shall obtain a prior authorization for temporarily remove. However, the Company can move the rigs from a warehouse to another on simple notification to the competent customs services.