Landed Cost Is a Stack, Not a Price
The number that decides a Grenadian job is not the price per square foot at the loading bay. It is the figure sitting on the pallet at your site gate once freight, duty, tax, service charges and haulage have all attached themselves to it. Each of those is calculated on a different base, at a different moment, and sometimes in a different currency. That is why two quotes for identical stone can land a long way apart while both are perfectly honest. Understanding the order in which the stack assembles is most of the work, and it takes an afternoon rather than a consultant.
Duty Under the CARICOM Common External Tariff
Grenada is a full member of CARICOM, so imports are assessed under the Common External Tariff. Rates run from zero to 45 percent depending on the ten-digit tariff code, and they are applied to the CIF value, meaning cost, insurance and freight together rather than the invoice alone. Goods of CARICOM origin travel duty free with a Certificate of Origin, while stone arriving from outside the region pays the full rate for its code. Four consequences follow, and they are the ones worth acting on.
- Your tariff code decides your duty, so get it confirmed in writing before you order anything.
- Freight sits inside the duty base, so a cheaper sailing lowers duty as well as freight.
- Insurance sits inside that base too, so declare it accurately rather than approximately.
- A regional supplier and an overseas supplier can never be compared on unit price alone.
How VAT Sits on Top
The standard rate of Value Added Tax in Grenada is 15 percent, governed by the Value Added Tax Act No. 23 of 2009 and administered by the Inland Revenue Division. The calculation order is the part buyers get wrong. Duty is worked out on the CIF value first, and VAT is then charged on CIF plus duty, not on CIF on its own. A reduced rate of 10 percent exists for hotel accommodation, tourism-related services and dive operations, which describes a guest bill rather than a container of paving. Registration for VAT begins at EC$300,000 of annual taxable supplies. If your company is registered, ask your accountant how import VAT is treated in your own return before you write it off as a sunk cost.
The Charges That Sit Beside Duty and VAT
The Comptroller of Customs administers more than two lines. The published list covers the Common External Tariff, Value Added Tax, the Customs Service Charge, the Environmental Levy, Excise Tax and Petrol Tax. Not all of them touch cut stone, and the ones that do are exactly where a budget quietly slips.
- A Customs Service Charge applies broadly to imported merchandise. Confirm the current rate with your broker rather than budgeting from a figure found on a forum.
- The Environmental Levy is aimed at specific listed goods, so ask directly whether it attaches to your tariff code instead of assuming either way.
- Excise and petrol taxes are not stone charges, though they may still appear on a consolidated statement.
- Terminal and handling charges are separate again, billed by the port rather than by customs.
- Broker fees, delivery orders and any storage sit outside the tax stack entirely.
Broker or Registered Declarant
A customs broker is not strictly mandatory here, which surprises most first-time importers. The choice is a real one, and it is worth making deliberately rather than by default.
- Declarations go in electronically through ASYCUDA World, and can be stored and assessed at any hour.
- An importer registered as a declarant may lodge and self-assess directly; everyone else engages a licensed broker.
- Accuracy stays with the importer either way, so the fee you save is not a risk you avoid.
- Settle your tariff codes on the first shipment and every later entry becomes routine.
Currency, Cash Flow and the EC Dollar
Assessment happens in East Caribbean dollars. Domestic construction is commonly quoted in EC$, while larger resort transactions are often agreed in US dollars, so a single project can carry both currencies at once. That is a cash-flow question as much as an accounting one, because duty and tax fall due at clearance while the stone may not be laid for weeks afterward. Put the tax payment in the same week as the freight payment, not in the month you invoice your client, and the job never stalls at the terminal gate. When we price the Grenada paving range, we set the ex-works figure and the freight out separately so your duty base is visible rather than buried inside one number.
Building a Budget You Can Defend
A defensible import budget has four lines you can point at: stone, freight and insurance, the duty and tax stack, and everything that happens after the gate. Ask your supplier for the first two in writing with the tariff code stated on the document. Ask your broker for the third against that same code, and for the current service charge rather than a remembered one. Price the fourth yourself, because only you know your access, your crew and your program. Where a job spans the mainland and the sister isles, supply support for all three islands is worth arranging at the outset, since the leg to Carriacou is booked and paid for separately. Confirm the tariff code first and every other number in the budget becomes reliable.