Spanish
Guayaquil, Ecuador.- Ecuador will begin to apply a fixed tariff of 20 dollars per package to personal purchases weighing less than or equal to 4 kilograms, and whose maximum value does not exceed 400 dollars, and that arrive in the country through Postal Services, the public postal company.
This measure had already come into effect in mid-June for packages entering the country under the 'Courier 4x4' regime through private operators, but through the Postal Services company "the payment of the tariff was evaded", according to what was explained this Sunday by the National Customs Service of Ecuador (Senae).
President Daniel Noboa reformed the regulations of the Customs Facilitation Title for Trade, stating that only those who bring packages to the country weighing less than or equal to 2 kilograms and whose 'free on board' (FOB) value - which includes packaging, transportation, and customs expenses - is less than or equal to 2 dollars will be exempt from paying this fee. This provision shall only apply to packages imported through the public postal service. According to Senae, the measure was taken to "guarantee fair trade, avoid distortions detected in the use of the mechanism, and ensure equitable treatment for all users." The exemption for '2x2' packages entering through postal service will not take effect until eight days after its publication in the Official Registry, so that Senae and the Postal Services company can make the respective coordinations that allow its correct implementation.When the measure for small imports by private courier was announced, the Government pointed out that this business model had grown by 392% in the last four years, from 102.7 million dollars in 2020 to 502 million dollars in 2024.
You can read: MINERD and Grupo SID present a digital platform to train more than 20 thousand students in the SDGs Similarly, the increase in the number of packages was 637%, reaching 6.5 million. This increase generated "serious consequences" for national sectors such as textiles and footwear, according to data from the Ministry of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments and Fisheries. Textiles had losses of "69 million dollars" and footwear faced an "8% drop", according to the same portfolio. The Ministry explained at the time that the objective of the measure was to "protect formal employment and Ecuadorian production, promote fair and equitable trade, avoid the unregulated commercial use of the 4x4 regime and correct market distortions that affect imports".
