Car dealers summoned to regulate their activities in Algeria

The ministry of small and medium-sized companies has summoned the car dealers operating in Algeria to comply their activities with the legislation in force, requiring them to deal directly with the original carmakers represented in Algeria to retail them on the domestic market.

The new law prevents them to resort to an intermediary to distribute cars in destined for the local consumption either in their original country or a foreign one. This legislation comes to revise the one issued in December 2007 and remedy its shortcomings.
Besides it requires from the car dealers to provide the original spare parts and enough showrooms for the different brands they distribute in Algeria, as well as respecting the supply delays that exceed 6 months in some cases.
The decree obliges the car dealers to respect the provision concerning the advance payment given by the consumers which shouldn’t exceed 10 % of the gross total including taxes, in the wake of several complaints expressed by citizens, especially the young entrepreneurs that that acquired loans within the framework of the employment agencies.
The trade ministry has registered thousands of cases of infringements of the law over the last two years, notably those related to the requirements over the distribution of the new cars including the article 5 which obliges the operators to supply the market with original spare parts.
The customers have to wait one year to get spare parts especially for the cars imported through an intermediary from the European and Asian markets, assessments from the trade ministry revealed.
However, the car dealers explained the delay in the supply with spare parts, by the high taxes imposed by the authorities on the imported goods and the remoteness of the areas where the spare parts are stocked.