The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MOFAIC) implemented a system for electronic attestation of import commercial invoices on February 1, 2023. Customers must have their import commercial invoices attested by MOFAIC before filing Customs Declarations with UAE Customs. This new law will apply to all products imported into the UAE worth more than AED 10,000.
Customers will have a grace period of 14 days following the declaration of goods to comply with the attestation, which costs AED 150 per commercial invoice. Failure to do so will result in a fine of AED 500 imposed by MOFAIC.
The MOFAIC exceptions will be applied to the following imports:
• Goods with an invoice value of less than AED 10,000
• Imports of Personal Items
• Import from the Gulf Cooperation Council
• Importing into a Free Zone
• Transit Import
• Diplomatic, police and military forces, charitable organizations, and international organizations
• Consumer-to-consumer e-commerce movements MOFAIC implemented an electronic online approach for completing import invoice attestation by uploading PDF documents, which creates a reference number as proof of attestation. This reference is integrated with the UAE Customs system to check the customer’s attestation performed prior to import declaration
