Hi,

I went to the New Customs House at Delhi airport recently to ask what the procedures were for leaving my bike in India while I popped home until the summer. Some rumours became some facts.

Broadly, so far as the customs people are concerned, the carnet is giving you a duty-free period of six months for import of goods (your vehicle) into India. That period can be extended once and only once by six months.

If you fall outside of that then you must pay duty on the value of the vehicle at whatever rate it is.

The small print goes on to say that if you take your vehicle out of India then return within six months then the duty-free period will be calculated as from when you first brought the vehicle into India. In other words, you can't pop into Nepal for a week and hope the duty-free period resets.

Actually, most of the above applies to all goods (temporarily) imported into India it's just that they had so many complaints about tourists being hassled that they produced special clauses to "help" sort out the mess. As you can read in the documents below, the additional clarifications merely muddy the waters.

Delhi Customs ATA Carnet page links to the special provisions for private vehicles.

You can read the same rules at Chennai and Mumbai.

The three clauses regarding the payment of duty are:

1. No duty to be paid if less than six months and can apply for a six month extension.
2. No duty to be paid if being in hospital or having the vehicle repaired at a garage (under lock and key) takes you over the six months
3. Pay duty if you've stayed longer than six months

Bizarrely, a condition applies against the third clause (paying duty) in that the carnet holder must remain with the vehicle in India. Not only do you wonder what happens if you don't remain with the vehicle but the customs man was applying this condition to the other clauses (which you would have thought would list it as a condition if it was important).

I was plainly being an irritant by asking innocent questions about customs and carnets and was dismissed from the man's office.

I was then redirected to someone, ahem, higher up the food chain who was a great deal more pragmatic for my particular circumstances:

1. fly home, the carnet/vehicle are not registered against your passport so you won't get any hassle about leaving the country without your vehicle
2. apply (in writing) for the six month extension now then when you return in five months stride purposefully back into the office and demand to know what happened to your application

Anyway, the executive summary is that your carnet only gives you six months grace in India before you'll have to do some paperwork or start coughing up some cash.

Cheers,

Ian

So, If i'm going to fly home and leave the motorcycle in India I have to work for not registering the bike on my passport, is that right??
How you mange to convince them not to do that???

I didn't do anything. I entered India three times overland (from Pakistan, from Bhutan and from Bangladesh) and on no occasion did they put anything in my passport as regards the motorcycle.

There was no problem when I flew home.

The real problem is getting the second six months duty-free period from the customs people (without them noticing that I've left the country...). Given that three different people in the building had three different opinions on what the rules were it may well be less of an issue than it seems.

I just want to avoid a hefty customs duty charge when I finally return and take the bike out of India! Do the guys on the border know any more than the guys at the airport?

Cheers,

Ian