The real landed cost of importing: the six financial items importers forget
📌 In short: Import landed cost is almost always built from the supplier invoice, freight and customs duties. That is the visible part. The six items detailed here are financial: they appear on no invoice, sit in no obvious expense account, and yet weigh directly on margin. Several grew heavier in 2026 with the obligation to domicile before shipment and the capping of import outstandings at 100% of equity.
Keywords in this article
1. What the supplier invoice does not tell you
A properly built import landed cost has two families of costs. The first is well known: purchase price, freight, insurance, import duties and taxes, customs clearance, inland transport. It is calculated from documents.
The second appears on no document. It is financial: it measures what time, locked-up cash and consumed banking capacity actually cost. It is what separates a stated margin from a realised one.
| # | Financial item | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lock-up between domiciliation and collection | The cost of the time your money is committed but not yet sold |
| 2 | Banking envelope consumed | What the operation takes out of your overall borrowing capacity |
| 3 | Unsettled outstanding ceiling | The volume of business your balance sheet allows, regardless of demand |
| 4 | Bank charges on the operation | Domiciliation, commissions, transfer, foreign exchange |
| 5 | Port retention costs | Demurrage and storage, proportional to delay |
| 6 | Cost of documentary non-compliance | The risk of refusal, now far more expensive |
📌 Scope note. This article covers the financial costs of importing. Customs duties, VAT and applicable taxes depend on the tariff classification of the goods and must be established with your freight forwarder and the customs administration: they are not quantified here.
2. Item 1 — Cash lock-up, lengthened by the 2026 reform
Between the moment your cash is committed and the moment the goods are sold and collected, your money works for that operation and nothing else. That period has a cost, equal to your financing rate applied to the actual duration.
And that duration lengthened in 2026. Note to banks no. 01/DGC/2026 of 14 May 2026 now requires bank domiciliation to take place before the goods are shipped by the foreign supplier. The banking commitment therefore precedes the vessel's departure, where it could previously be regularised along the way. We cover this reform in our article on bank domiciliation for imports.
The real cycle to quantify
Domiciliation → shipment
A new segment, borne entirely by the importer since May 2026.
Shipment → arrival
Sea or air transit, depending on origin.
Arrival → clearance and collection
The most variable segment, and the one that generates item 5.
Storage → sale → customer payment
Often the longest, and the most systematically underestimated.
The lock-up cost is calculated by applying your effective financing rate to the value committed, over the cumulative duration of these four segments. Set against unit margin, it often reveals that an operation deemed profitable is only so while the cycle stays short.
3. Items 2 and 3 — What the operation consumes of your banking capacity
These two items never appear in a margin calculation, yet they determine the volume of business you can actually do.
Item 2 — The banking envelope consumed
An import operation generally mobilises a commitment by signature. Such commitments consume the envelope the bank can allocate to you. Regulation no. 14-02 of 16 February 2014 sets their conversion factors into credit-risk equivalent:
| Commitment | Conversion factor |
|---|---|
| Documentary credit where the goods constitute collateral | 20% |
| Documentary credit where they do not | 50% |
| Acceptances, irrevocable credit openings | 100% |
The difference between 20% and 50% is not trivial: for the same amount, an operation whose goods are not constituted as collateral weighs two and a half times more in your exposure. And that exposure counts against the 25% ceiling on the bank's regulatory equity per beneficiary, described in our article on what prudential rules force your bank to calculate.
Item 3 — The 100%-of-equity outstanding ceiling
Since Instruction no. 05-2026 of 19 May 2026, the outstanding balance of imports of goods for resale in the state, domiciled across all banks and not yet settled, must at no time exceed 100% of the operator's equity.
⚠️ The consequence is an opportunity cost, not an expense. Your import volume is no longer limited by demand or by your cash, but by your equity. Every operation that stays unsettled for long occupies part of the ceiling and blocks the next one. The landed cost of a slow operation therefore includes the margins of the operations it prevented.
An operation counts as settled only when the domiciliary bank makes the final debit of the account. Accelerating settlement frees capacity — that is, turnover.
What does an import operation really cost you?
We rebuild your landed cost operation by operation, financial cycle included, and calculate the capacity headroom you have left under the 100% ceiling.
Have my real cost calculated →4. Items 4 and 5 — Bank charges and retention costs
Item 4 — Bank charges on the operation
They fall into four families, to be listed operation by operation with your bank, since their amounts are set by banking conditions rather than by regulation:
- charges for opening and managing the domiciliation;
- commissions on the documentary credit or documentary collection, depending on the instrument used;
- transfer charges abroad;
- the cost of the foreign exchange operation.
Taken individually, each looks marginal. Set against a unit margin of a few points, their combined weight is not — all the more so as they are due whatever the commercial outcome of the operation.
Item 5 — Demurrage and storage
These are the only costs on this list that grow with time for no return whatsoever. They start once the goods remain immobilised at the port or terminal beyond the free time allowed.
Their distinctive feature is that they are entirely avoidable upstream: they almost always result from an incomplete documentary file or a badly sequenced timeline, not from a logistical mishap. Since the 2026 reform, a sequencing error between domiciliation and shipment can no longer be corrected — it is paid for in days of lock-up.
5. Item 6 — The cost of documentary non-compliance
This is the newest item, and the one whose cost has risen most. Until 2026, a documentary irregularity was generally regularised during the operation. That is no longer the case.
Note no. 01/DGC/2026 requires banks to check the sequence systematically: they must verify that the date on the transport document is later than the domiciliation date. The commercial invoice, Bill of Lading, Airway Bill, CMR, shipping certificates and any document establishing the effective shipping date are all examined.
If the transport document predates the domiciliation, the bank must refuse the operation — unless an exceptional authorisation expressly provided for by exchange regulations applies. The note also recalls that failure to comply constitutes an offence under exchange legislation and regulations.
🔎 Field observation (our engagements, not a regulatory text). The cost of non-compliance is never limited to the operation concerned. Goods shipped without valid domiciliation stay at the port while the file is rebuilt; demurrage runs, the outstanding ceiling stays occupied, and the supplier relationship comes under strain. Item 6 mechanically triggers items 1, 3 and 5.
6. Building a landed cost that holds up
Observations from our practice supporting importers, not regulatory provisions.
- Calculate per operation, never as an annual average. The financial items depend on cycle duration, which varies widely between operations. An average conceals precisely the operations that destroy margin.
- Quantify the cycle in real days, from the day of domiciliation to the day the customer pays. That duration, not transit time, determines item 1.
- Keep a consolidated all-banks outstanding record. Without it, item 3 stays invisible until the day a domiciliation is refused.
- Negotiate the banking instrument knowing its conversion factor. Constituting the goods as collateral moves the factor from 50% to 20%: that is capacity made available.
- Include bank charges in unit landed cost, not in overheads. Buried in structural costs, they disappear from product-level margin analysis.
- Treat documentary compliance as a cost item, not a formality. Since 2026, it is the item whose failure costs the most.
This article covers the financial costs of importing and does not address customs duties, VAT or applicable taxes, which depend on tariff classification and must be established with the customs administration. It constitutes neither legal advice nor investment advice. The texts cited may be amended: verify them before any operation.
FAQ — Frequently asked questions
🔎 Sources and references
- Instruction no. 05-2026 of 19 May 2026 setting financial standing requirements for imports of goods intended for resale in the state — Bank of Algeria — Exchange regulations · Verified on 01/08/2026
- Note to banks no. 01/DGC/2026 of 14 May 2026 — Directorate General of Exchange — Bank of Algeria · Verified on 01/08/2026
- Regulation no. 14-02 of 16 February 2014 on large exposures and shareholdings (OG 2014-56), Arts. 4 and 12 — Bank of Algeria · Verified on 01/08/2026
📚 Related articles on ProfitPilot
