Ministry of Agriculture Restores Four-Month Registration Deadline for Animal Feed Imports from South America

The Acting Deputy for Trade Development at the Ministry of Agriculture finally approved changing the order registration deadline from three months back to the four months allowed last year, aiming to alleviate some concerns of traders in the animal feed sector—especially those purchasing goods from South America. However, investigations show that, even under the best conditions and without considering other time-consuming factors such as customs procedures, the minimum required time to register an order for a product from South America is about three months

Let’s consider a trader planning to register and import goods from South America. In this case, companies face a dual contradiction: on one hand, according to the regulations and mandatory procedures of the Ministry of Agriculture, companies are not permitted to purchase and ship goods before obtaining the order registration permit; on the other hand, based on current practices for purchasing goods from South American origins, loading and shipping usually takes place about one and a half months after the purchase.

This means, according to the Ministry of Agriculture’s announcement, the shipping bill of lading date cannot precede the order registration date. Therefore, assuming an order is registered from South America, the shipment is loaded and dispatched only 45 days later, and considering the maritime transit time for these goods (between 35 to 40 days), it takes approximately 80 to 85 days for the ship to dock at the destination. For this reason, the validity period of order registrations in the past was one year, with a minimum of six months. Due to the necessity of implementing purchasing and market regulation plans, the authorized validity of order registrations was reduced to 4 months plus an extension of 2 months and 15 days.

The fact that over 95% of extension requests for animal feed order registrations come from applicants confirms that the order registration validity period for animal feed cannot logically be less than 4 months and must align with the international trade conditions of these goods!