Importing building Materials in Zimbabwe

• If you are planning on buying building material for a specific building and you need to claim traveller’s rebate especially after you have gone outside of Zimbabwe and bought the items, you need a building plan in order for you to be considered a private importer rather than commercial importer. A private importer is any person who imports goods for personal consumption and a commercial importer is one who imports goods for resale or in large quantities. |NB a bill of quantities also helps.

• As of 1 January 2019, most building material DO NOT require an importation permit to be imported.
• Make sure that you have your invoices ready as Zimra would want to check your declarations.
• Sometimes it’s good to know the rates of duty of the things you are importing. As a private importer, the law of Zimbabwe allows you to choose between flat rates of duty and tariff rates.
• The following is a list of commonly imported materials for building a house and their tariff rates of duty

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The above list does not require a permit. If you import under private importation, you are most likely charged flat rate of duty of 40%. But if you want you can request for tariff rate for the individual items above.

Let’s say you are travelling from South Africa in a truck and you are importing 6 doors for use in your home and these are valued at 4000 ZAR from South Africa coming through Beitbridge border post.  If it’s the first time you are travelling that particular month, if you present a plan you are granted travellers rebate equivalent to $200 and you are charged duty on the excess. On an exchange rate of $1=14 ZAR, you are charged on 4000-2800 = 1200 ZAR. If the use of flat rates is introduced then duty will be approximately 40% of 1200 ZAR = 480 ZAR. You can our duty calculator on www.zimdutycalculator.co.zw to see how much you might be charged.

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