Mozambique is experiencing a reduction in revenue from vehicle imports due to the effects of the new coronavirus (covid-19) that resulted in the closure of most borders since March, which affected international trade, especially in the circulation of goods and scarcity of dollar in the marked.
As a result, until mid-November this year, the Mozambican state collected only about six billion Meticais in taxes resulting from the import of vehicles against eight billion Meticais charged in the same period of 2019. The figure represents a reduction in little more two billion Meticais. In the same tuning fork, the total import cost, which includes the purchase and the entire logistical process of the vehicle to its destination, called CIF or customs value, decreased from 46.5 billion Meticais last year to 36.9 billion in the period under review.
Until mid-November, the country imported 44,228 vehicles against 53,387 last year. Of the vehicles imported this year, 21,354 are used cars for a period of up to seven years and 22,874 with more than seven.
However, as a consequence of the pandemic, maritime traffic has dropped significantly and, with this, the volume of imports, including vehicles, which in the case of Mozambique most come from Japan.
In addition, in compliance with the state of emergency, one of the measures applied at the ports is the mandatory quarantine of fourteen days to which the crew of the ships were subjected when arriving at the Mozambique channel.
