Buying a Car in Ethiopia

I am learning about buying a vehicle in Ethiopia, and it is pretty interesting. First, Ethiopia seems to be the one place in the world where used cars APPRECIATE in value. This is compounded by the fact that taxes on vehicles are exorbitantly high. Most of the vehicles are imported - only recently have a few local plants opened up. The import tax to bring a used car in approaches 200-300%. That's right. 300%.

So let's take our 2007 VW Jetta as an example. The value of this car is around $14,000. The taxes to import this vehicle add up to around $35,000. This brings the overall cost of the car to $50,000! For our 5 year old VW with 80,000 miles on it.

Finding a used car is also interesting. There is no equivalent of AutoTrader.com (except I did find a few sites that had some used cars on them.) The primary method of finding a used car is to check the bulletin board at the local grocery store for postings. Here are some of the options:

This is a 1991 Toyota Corolla with over 200,000 miles on it. It is $14,000. That of course doesn't count if the car was recently imported. If that's the case, you can tack on another $14,000 in taxes = $28K. (After 10 years in the country, the vehicle becomes tax-exempt). FYI, the blue book value on this car is $1,300. What a deal!

Here's another option. Let's be honest, a Corolla's a little small for a family of four. So we'll upgrade to an SUV. Not going to be ostentatious though. So we'll go with a 1993 Nissan Patrol. The

Patrol was not sold in the US - only Japan. But you get the idea from the photo. Again, probably talking over 200,000 miles on this one. The price tag... $30,000. Maybe we're lucky and the duty is paid. But if not, the total will be around $60,000. As a reference the blue book on this one (I had to use a Pathfinder as a reasonable substitute) is $1500.

Okay, well, back to shopping...