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How to Ship from China to Egypt: Alexandria, ACID & VAT

The number has to exist before the goods leave China. Egypt runs the strictest pre-shipment gate in this series. Before a vessel loads, Egyptian customs has to issue a nineteen-digit Advance Cargo Information Declaration number — the ACID — and that number has to appear on the bill of lading, the commercial invoice, the packing list and the certificate of origin. If it does not, the consignment is not cleared. It is returned, at the carrier's or the agent's expense. There is no post-arrival fix, because the system is designed so that a shipment which was not declared in advance was never really authorised to come.

The second thing is that there is no free trade agreement between China and Egypt, so Chinese goods are assessed at the general tariff rates on the CIF value. On top of the duty sits VAT at fourteen percent, and the VAT is charged on the CIF value plus the duty plus other fees — a number that is always larger than what you paid the supplier. Egypt also has no general de minimis for commercial cargo, so the first item in the box is taxed like the thousandth.

The third thing is that the difficult part is often the money, not the ship. Egypt has used import payment rules to manage foreign currency demand more than once in the last few years, and a rule that requires a letter of credit before the goods move is a rule about your bank, your cash and your timeline. Importers who sort the freight first and the payment second find that the freight was the easy half.

Register as an importer before you order

Every commercial consignment into Egypt is cleared against an importer who is registered, and the registration is the first thing that is checked rather than the last. A first-time importer should treat it as the first item on the critical path.

A foreign business with no Egyptian entity cannot act as importer of record here. The usual routes are to sell to an Egyptian company that holds its own registration, to appoint a local importer of record, or to structure the sale so that the Egyptian partner is the importer throughout. Whichever it is, it has to be settled before the ACID is applied for, because the ACID application is made by the importer and the importer's name cannot be changed afterwards.

The ACID number, and why it has to exist before the vessel loads

The Advance Cargo Information system was introduced for sea freight in 2021 under Customs Law 207 of 2020, and it was extended to air freight on 1 January 2026. It runs across two connected platforms: Nafeza, which the Egyptian importer uses, and CargoX, which the foreign exporter uses to move the documents. The sequence matters more than the paperwork.

The consequence of missing the step is unusually blunt. A consignment that arrives without a valid ACID on its documents is not cleared; it is held and then returned, and the cost of that return falls on the carrier or the agent. Storage accrues while it is decided. There is a narrow exemption reported for express and postal shipments up to 50 kg and around USD 2,000 in value, which is worth knowing if you send samples, but it is not a route for commercial cargo.

Alexandria, Damietta, Port Said and Suez

Egypt sits on both sides of the Suez isthmus, and that geography is the main thing to understand about the ports. A vessel from China transits the Canal to reach Alexandria, Dekheila, Damietta and Port Said. Sokhna, on the Gulf of Suez, is reached before the Canal rather than after it — which changes both the routing and the fee picture.

Ask your broker which gateway the carrier actually serves rather than which one is closest to your warehouse. Not every service calls every Egyptian port, and a transhipment through Port Said or an East Mediterranean hub adds days that a direct call would not.

How long into Egypt by vessel and aircraft

The figures below are port-to-port for full containers and airport-to-airport for air cargo. They are ranges, not promises, and in 2026 they are wider than they used to be.

Customs value, duty and the VAT on top

Egypt values goods on the CIF value: what you paid the supplier, plus international freight, plus insurance. If you are used to a country that assesses duty on the FOB value, this is the first difference. The second is that VAT is charged on the CIF value plus the duty plus other taxes and fees, so it compounds.

Two things come out of that. The duty is charged on a base that includes the freight, so a cheap freight quote still leaves a bigger tax bill than an expensive one, though not by much. And the VAT is 3,164 rather than the 2,520 you would get by applying fourteen percent to the invoice — about a quarter more, because the base has grown. Import VAT is recoverable by a registered Egyptian business against output VAT, so it is a cash-flow item rather than a cost for most importers; the duty is not.

Incoterms on an Egypt booking, and who registers the ACID

Incoterms decide who does the ACI filing, and on this lane that is a bigger question than who pays the freight.

The practical advice is to put the ACI step into the commercial terms, in writing, with a named party and a date. "Buyer to raise the ACID not less than seven days before the intended loading date" is a sentence that prevents a great deal of expense.

The single window, and the documents that go through it

Nafeza is Egypt's single window: the declaration, the document upload, the risk assessment and the release all happen in one place. The document set is not unusual, but the format requirements are strict.

• Commercial invoice showing the CIF value, the importer's tax identification number, the exporter's registration or VAT number, and the ACID number. For the ACI filing itself, Egypt asks for the invoice in the official Nafeza structured format as well as a PDF — a plain PDF on its own is a frequent cause of a rejected file.
• Packing list with net and gross weights, dimensions and marks. Where the commercial invoice is detailed enough, Egypt now permits it to stand in for a separate packing list, though many brokers still prefer both.
• Bill of lading or air waybill carrying the ACID number. On air, the number goes in the OCI segment of the waybill.
• Certificate of origin, normally issued by a Chinese chamber of commerce and legalised by the Egyptian consulate where the product or the value requires it. The ACID goes in box 5, or in boxes 1 or 2.
• Conformity documents for regulated products: GOEIC factory registration, an inspection certificate or a certificate of conformity.
• Sector approvals where they apply — NTRA for telecoms and radio equipment, Ministry of Health or the food safety authority for food and food-contact goods, and others by category.
• The import declaration itself, filed electronically through Nafeza against the importer's registration.

Once filed, the declaration is routed. A green route clears in a day or two; a yellow route adds a document review, commonly two to five days; a red route adds a physical inspection, commonly five to ten days. The route is assigned by risk assessment, and the fastest way to a red route is a vague goods description or an HS code that does not match the invoice.

A consignment from Ningbo, followed to a warehouse in Cairo

A worked example makes the sequence clearer than a checklist. A Cairo importer buys a mixed container of household electrical goods from a factory in Ningbo.

Notice where the risk sat. It was not in the voyage. It was in week one: a factory that turned out not to be registered, or a bank that took three weeks to open a credit, would have cost more than any freight decision in the chain.

Where the duty comes from, and the fees added to it

The duty rate is set by the tariff heading under Egypt's twelve-digit HS code, itself built on the international six-digit system with national sub-divisions beneath it. Because there is no agreement with China, the rate you get is the general rate.

The one that catches importers is anti-dumping. It sits outside the normal tariff, it is applied to specific headings from specific origins, and unlike VAT it is pure cost. A product that looks comfortably profitable at a ten percent duty rate can be unprofitable at ten percent plus an anti-dumping measure.

GOEIC, and the factory that has to be registered in Egypt

The General Organization for Export and Import Control runs two separate things that new importers routinely confuse. One is the importers register, which is about you. The other is the conformity programme, which is about your supplier.

Under Ministerial Decree 43 of 2016 and the decrees that expanded the list, the foreign manufacturer — or the trademark owner — of a regulated product has to be registered with GOEIC before the first shipment leaves. The list covers a broad set of consumer and light industrial goods: garments and ready-made clothes, home textiles, shoes and leather bags, cosmetics, dental and deodorant products, soap and detergents, floor coverings, tableware, cutlery and kitchenware, sanitary ware, household tiles and glassware, reinforced steel bars, household appliances, office and household furniture, bicycles and motorcycles, watches, household lighting equipment, toys, door locks, low-pressure gas regulators, hand valves for gas pipes, insulated electric cables up to 3 kV, welding electrodes, lamp ballasts, LED lamps and batteries. Photovoltaic solar products were added to the programme with effect from August 2026.

The registration itself is done by the manufacturer, and it asks for the kind of documentation a factory either has or has to go and get: a legalised business licence, the legal entity and scope documents, brand ownership or authorisation, quality and environmental and labour certifications, ILAC-accredited laboratory credentials, and agreement to a factory audit on safety and environmental standards. It takes time, commonly quoted at around a month or more, and it cannot be done retroactively once the goods are at the port.

Standards, conformity and the products that need a certificate

Beyond GOEIC, sector regulators sit between the goods and release, and a product can need more than one approval.

The certificate of conformity is the document that ties the testing to the shipment. It is issued by a GOEIC-authorised inspection body after a review of test reports from an accredited laboratory, sampling, and in many cases a physical inspection before loading. It is worth remembering that the inspection happens in China, before the container is sealed, so the booking has to be made with enough room for it.

Paying the supplier, and the currency question

Import payment rules in Egypt have moved more than once, and the direction of travel is worth understanding before you commit to a supplier.

In February 2022 the central bank made a letter of credit a precondition for imports, which had the effect of slowing releases and backing cargo up at the ports. The rule was cancelled in December 2022 and importers went back to documentary collection, where documents move between banks against payment or acceptance. From early 2025 the central bank reinstated a letter of credit requirement, with exemptions carved out for essentials — grains, some foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals and some chemicals among them.

What this means practically is that your bank has to open the credit before the goods move, and Egyptian banks, like banks everywhere, take a view on which transactions they will support. A first-time importer with a modest order may find the bank slower than the factory. It also means the sequence is: pro forma invoice, then bank, then ACID, then production, then ship — not the order most first-time importers assume.

Invoices that must carry the ACID number

The invoice is where most ACI failures originate, because it is the one document the exporter produces and the importer does not see until it is too late.

• The CIF value has to be shown, not just the goods value. Egypt taxes on CIF, so an invoice that only shows FOB invites a reassessment.
• The ACID number has to be printed on the face of the invoice, in the same nineteen-digit form as issued.
• The importer's tax identification number and the exporter's registration or VAT number both appear.
• The description has to match the HS code. "Machine parts" is not a description that survives a risk assessment. "Stainless steel kitchen sinks, 304 grade, 800 × 500 mm" is.
• The structured Nafeza format version has to accompany the PDF for the filing itself.

One detail worth passing to your supplier early: the certificate of origin carries the number too, and if the chamber of commerce issues it before the ACID exists, it has to be issued again. That is a week, in the worst case, for a document that costs very little.

Ordering online, and importing under your own registration

Buying through an online marketplace does not change the ACI rule. The platform may handle the checkout and may even collect a tax estimate, but the consignment still needs an ACID raised by a registered Egyptian importer, and a marketplace seller in China is usually not going to produce a Nafeza-structured invoice with your number on it.

For a business, the practical routes are the same as anywhere else: register as an importer, buy under your own registration, and have the supplier issue documents in your name; or use a marketplace that offers a local importing entity, in which case find out whose number is on the declaration. What does not work is assuming that because the checkout felt like a domestic purchase, the import is a domestic purchase.

Samples are the exception worth knowing. Small express consignments up to around 50 kg and roughly USD 2,000 in value are reported to be outside the ACI requirement, which is why sample parcels move while sample crates do not.

Commercial cargo, and personal shipments into Egypt

The ACI system is built around commercial trade, and the two categories behave differently at the port.

The China forwarder and the Egyptian customs broker

On most lanes the forwarder and the broker are two suppliers you manage in parallel. On this one they are two halves of a single filing, and the seam between them is where shipments fail.

Get them speaking to each other before the booking, not after it. The single question that matters is: who uploads to CargoX, and by what deadline. If both sides answer "the other one," the container is already at risk.

Checking a forwarder on an Egypt booking

The questions that separate a forwarder who has run this lane from one who has read about it are specific.

• Have you filed an ACI envelope on CargoX, and can you show a redacted example? Any competent operator can describe the system. Fewer can show the filing.
• Do you work to 48 hours before arrival or before departure? The answer should be conservative, and it should match what the carrier says.
• Can you produce the invoice in the Nafeza structured format? If the answer is "we send a PDF," the file is at risk of rejection.
• Do you check GOEIC registration before booking? A forwarder that books first and checks second has the sequence backwards.
• Which Egyptian ports does the service actually call? Direct calls are worth days over transhipment.
• What is the current routing? If they cannot tell you whether the service goes through the Canal or around the Cape, they are quoting a schedule rather than selling one.
• Who pays the CargoX fees? It should be in the quote, not discovered later.

Three shipments into Egypt, and the reason for each

Ramadan, summer and the Canal

Egypt's calendar has predictable effects on the schedule, and the Canal adds an unpredictable one.

What Goodhope handles on the Egypt lane

We work the China end of this lane, and we work it knowing that the ACI step is the one that decides whether the shipment is worth anything on arrival.

• ACI coordination. We hold a verified CargoX presence and file the exporter-side envelope, and we tell you the deadline we are working to rather than the one that sounds best.
• Documents that survive the filing. Commercial invoice in the Nafeza structured format and PDF, packing list, bill of lading or air waybill with the ACID in the right place, certificate of origin with the number in box 5.
• GOEIC status checks before you pay. We ask the factory for its registration before the deposit moves, and we tell you if the name on the registration is not the name on the invoice.
• Factory collection and consolidation. Pick-up across China, consolidation at our warehouse, and container loading with photographs before sealing.
• FCL and LCL from Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, Qingdao and Tianjin to Alexandria, Dekheila, Damietta, Port Said and Sokhna, plus air freight to Cairo.
• Current routing, stated plainly. If the service goes around the Cape, we say so at quotation rather than at arrival.
• Cargo insurance, inspection and dangerous goods handling where the shipment needs them.

We do not act as your importer of record in Egypt and we do not issue the ACID — that is your registration and your broker. What we do is make sure the Chinese half of the filing is correct and on time, which is where most of the avoidable failures happen.

Frequently asked questions

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