Saturday, May 17, 2014

Charging of Custom Duty for Pet Dogs/Cats imported to Sri Lanka Via Air Cargo

As you may be aware, sometime we have to take the option of importing Pets (Dogs/Cats/birds) through "Manifest Cargo", because some airports and some airlines or routes only accept pets as "Cargo". Also, if the owner/caregiver is not travelling with the dog/cat, then the only option is to send the pet as "cargo"... 

Those of you with experience will know that it is expensive to import/export pets as "Manifest cargo". The major part of the expense in importing a pet as "Cargo" are the freight cost when exporting and the custom duty charges & clearance charges when importing.

Calculating the "total value" for which custom duty is charged, is based on the freight cost, the value of the pet, the value of insurance and the statutory tax charges in Sri Lanka. This theoretically totals up to about 50% of the total freight cost, but can be slightly varied due to different reasons at the time of import.