Vehicles’ Import: “A Quota Of 152,000 Awaiting The Green Light”

According to a statement by Mohamed Bairi, member of the National Automobile Dealers Association and Director of “Ival” group, no information was received from the Trade Ministry regarding the import licenses for vehicles.

Yet the Minister of Trade, Bakhti Belaïb, revealed a few days ago that import licenses for vehicles laying down quantitative quotas for each car-dealer based in Algeria would officially be ready in a week’s time.

Indeed, these car dealers have been awaiting these vital licenses since February, hoping that the delivery date won’t be postponed because the prescribed period was set at two months starting from the closing date of the submission of files’ operation which expired on 3 April when more than 80 applications were filed during this folders’ deposit operation meant to be eligible for quantitative quotas on imports of vehicles fixed by the Government at 152,000 units for the year 2016.

As a reminder, according to the Ministry of Trade, the delay is due to the fact that the Committee in charge of the delivery of import licenses (comprising representatives of the Ministries of Trade, Industry, Finance, Agriculture, banking and customs) had started its work with the allocation of quotas of agricultural tariff products from the EU, including cement and reinforcing bars, which required a lot of time.

In this sense, Mr. Bairi, according to information in his possession, said the quota would be distributed among all the car dealerships, accredited in accordance with the new specifications on the basis of half of what they have imported the previous year in order to avoid speculation, vehicle import quota will be allocated to these dealers based on what it meant by percentage share they used to import from annual global imports of cars.

During a recent meeting with exporters, the Trade Minister, Bakhti Belaïb, warned that the distribution of quotas within the framework of the granting of import licenses for vehicles does not take into account speculative imports or intended unlawful transfers of currency overseas, practiced by some ill-advised car-dealers.

For his part, the President of the “Sovac” Automobile Group, Mourad Eulmi, feels the same way, saying he expects to be duly informed shortly about the decisions to be taken by the relevant ministerial department on the matter.

Moreover, the trade deficit exceeded in the first three months of the year 5 billion dollars, a huge figure despite all the restrictions of imports, especially if we know that throughout this period, there was the statement of the Association of banks and financial institutions (Abef), dated 5 January 2016, pointing to the freezing of bank debits for all imports to be subjected to prior licensing such as vehicles, cement, round concrete etc…

This had the effect of curbing imports of automobiles and especially with  the import bill of vehicles decreasing to 306.77 million dollars during the first two months of 2016 against $ 730 million dollars during the same period in 2015, a decrease of nearly 58%, according to the CNIS, which states that the imported volume was down 63% to 21,380 vehicles imported in January and February 2016 against 57,696 units in the first two months of the previous year.

This decline in imports was subjected to a backlash for car-dealers, according to sources from the National Automobile Dealers Association, saying the latter suffered financial losses during the last Automobile Show in Algiers because of the delays in the licenses’ delivery causing a dire lack of stocks making them unable to fulfill a growing customers’ demand.

But this won’t be the end of their quandary, or those of other importers because in his recent message addressed to the nation during Labor Day celebrations on May 1st, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika called for more restrictions on imports, covering all foreign products, because of the woeful economic difficulties now besetting Algeria.