AMENDMENTS TO THE CUSTOMS LAW RELATED TO THE IMPORT OF HYDROCARBONS.

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AMENDMENTS TO THE CUSTOMS LAW RELATED TO THE IMPORT OF HYDROCARBONS.

On June 1st, 2018, it was published on the official gazette, the «Decree that amends legal provisions of the Federal Tax Code, Customs Law, Federal Criminal Code and Federal Law to prevent federal crimes related to the Hydrocarbons sector”.

The most relevant aspects from a customs perspective are:

1. a) Extension of the period for abandonment of petroleum products. (Article 29, section II, paragraph b), second paragraph)

The purpose of the reform is to extend the period of 3 to 15 calendar days, to keep petroleum products under customs warehousing until the abandonment in favor of the Federal Treasury takes place as long as the customs port has appropriate facilities for the maintenance and conservation of those goods.

1. b) Elimination of the exception of electronic filling of the value of the goods and trading terms. (Article 36-A, fifth paragraph.)

In order to have better control over the foreign trade operations of hydrocarbons, related to the operations carried out by pipes or cables, the exception of not electronically filling the information regarding the value and other trading terms is eliminated. So, this obligation must be fulfilled.

1. c) Prohibition of temporary import of Hydrocarbons (IMMEX). (Article 108, section I, subsection a) and last paragraph.)

In order to avoid irregular operations carried out using an IMMEX Program, in the amendment, it was considered appropriate to prohibit the temporary import of petroleum products too be used during the production process, in accordance with article 108, section I, subsection a) of the law.

In the same way, in the last paragraph of article 108, it is stated that «petroleum products are goods that cannot be imported under and IMMEX Program.

1. d) Prohibition of the importation of hydrocarbons under the Bonded Warehouse and Strategic Bonded Warehouse schemes. (Article 135, last paragraph and 135-B, last paragraph)

Similar to temporary import, in order to have greater control of the hydrocarbon import operations, the petroleum products cannot imported either to the Bonded Warehouse nor to the Strategic Bonded Warehouse schemes.

The amendments detailed above are valid from June 4th, 2018.

It is important to mention that this amendment is the first part of a major reform of the Customs Law, which will be published and analyzed shortly.

SINCERELY,

Mexico City, June 7th, 2018