Dominican Customs Agency Ban on Shipping Used Clothing to the DR
Posted by Dwayne under DR Tips[3] Comments
One commonly used way to ship items from the US is to fill large drums and crates with items and have it shipped here from New York or Florida. This is widely used by small businesses in the DR to bring in used clothes and other items to be sold in small tiendas and flea markets. This is also commonly used by foreign residents to bring items in from the States for their own personal use. A new ban by the Dominican Customs Agency may cause you problems if this is one of the ways you use to get things from the US.
Used Clothing Ban
Apparently this law actually went into effect about 39 years ago, but has been pretty much ignored and wasn’t enforced by customs. Recently customs officials sent notices out to the large shopping companies handling this form of shipping like Salcedo Carco Express and Diaspora stating that the ban is to go into effect on Aug 1 (today).
While it would appear that this ban is meant to only affect people that are having large amounts of used clothing shipped into the DR to be sold, this could easily affect anyone having items shipped into the DR by drums or crates so you might want to talk to the shipping company to see how this might affect you before you start packing your drum.
Dominican Customs
The information I based this post from came from a Dominican News agency. I have tried to get additional information from the DR Customs Agency from their website https://www.aduanas.gob.do/ but so far have been unable to confirm this report or find more details. At this point it is probably best take this as a possible problem and contact your shipping company for more details being that they are the ones who received the notices.
August 2nd, 2012 at 5:29 am
I’d hate to see the used clothing shut down. Most of the stuff is much higher quality than what you can buy new here.
August 2nd, 2012 at 7:58 am
I’ve read that they are only confiscating shipments with only clothes and shoes in them. If you mix the clothes with food and other items it doesn’t look like a business and they are more likely to let the barrel go though.
August 6th, 2012 at 9:37 am
Yesterday President Fernandez called for the businesses to resume their sales. The problem now appears to be slanted toward making sure the clothes are clean before they are brought into the country, with most of the emphasis being on the clothes brought across the Haiti/Dominican boarder.
This gives the impression that it was just a side affect that clothes brought into the country directly from the US were also stopped and confiscated. So I wonder if the clothes that are already confiscated are now being returned to their owners?