Suspending a vehicle TIP in Peru
Peru is probably the only country in South America where you can leave your vehicle for an unlimited period of time, provided that you have the right paperwork. Citizens of the European Community can leave their vehicle in French Guiana without any restrictions, but that is about it. We wanted to leave our car behind for about a month while we flew home for Christmas. Although we nevertheless expected to leave Peru with the car within the TIP period of three months we decided to go for a TIP suspension. The formal penalty in Peru for overstaying is confiscation of the vehicle and as we weren't able to get any more concrete data on the real penalty we decided not to take the risk of being too late for whatever reason. As soon as the TIP suspension is approved the 90-days counter stops. When the TIP suspension cancellation is approved the counter starts again. Of course you are not allowed to drive the vehicle while the TIP is suspended. We had tremendous help from the travel agency Xplore Peru 4x4. The main business of Xplore Peru 4x4 is organizing off-road trips in Peru, but they also help with storage and repair of vehicles. Ask for Ernesto Orillo -
ernesto@xploreperu4x4.com. If you aren't fluent in Spanish or know exactly who has to do what at which place it will be a nightmare to get everything arranged in a reasonable time.
Below is a description of the process. The whole process has 3 phases:
- Applying for the suspension of the TIP
- Canceling the TIP suspension
- Leaving Peru with the vehicle
Applying for the suspension
The following steps need to be taken:
1. Find a suitable storage location. Ernesto helped us here and offered the choice between a more expensive place in Lima and a cheaper one some 40 km outside
2. Create a suspension request for customs
3. Take your vehicle to the storage location
4. Go to the police station closest to the storage location and request police to come over to the storage location to carry out an inspection a generate a statement. Note that from now on you formally aren't allowed to drive the vehicle anymore.
5. Collect a validated copy of the statement from any police station, usually the next day
6. Make copies of the vehicle ownership document, the owner's passport and the suspension request
7. Go to a suitable SENAT office and hand in
- The request document with copy
- The police statement
- Part 2 of the TIP that you got when you entered the country
- Copies of the ownership document and passport
The copy of the request document will be stamped and provided with a file number. We used this file number to track progress of the procedure via the internet (
http://www.sunat.gob.pe). The request will be sent by regular mail to the border station where the vehicle entered Peru. In our case a took nearly a month for this part of the process to be completed.
Cancellation of the suspension
1. Create a cancellation request
2. Go to a suitable SENAT office and hand in the cancellation request with a copy of the suspension request and the original TIP
The copy of the document is stamped and provided with a new file number, similar to the suspension request. It is again sent by regular mail to the border post of entry and processed there. An updated TIP will be sent back.
Processing the cancellation request including sending documents by regular mail can be a time consuming process. As we intended to leave Peru prior to the expected completion of the cancellation Ernesto took special action to speed the process up:
1. He arranged that it was accepted to process documents sent by email to the border post and that an approval document was emailed to us. This happened within a week after we submitted the cancellation request
2. The border post of departure was pre-informed about our arrival and contact information of the border post of entry was obtained
Leaving the country with the vehicle
With all preparations in place it took no more than 20 min. to complete processing at SUNAT at the border