Real customs clearance times: land, sea and air

Dossier: Importing machinery and inputs17-importar-maquinaria.md
Domain: Importing machinery: duty and clearanceimportar-maquinaria
Room: Invest · Importing machinery: duty and clearance/invertir/importar-maquinaria
Audited: Audited

The first Time Release Study in Central America (World Customs Organization methodology, sample from 8-14 July 2019, presented in January 2020) measured: overland at Tecún Umán II, 10.1 hours to release - of which 6.7 hours (66%) belonged to private actors (carrier and broker) and 3.4 hours (34%) to customs; maritime (Puerto Quetzal/APM Terminals/Santo Tomás), 8.8 days on average for goods in the red channel, with 70% of the time in other actors and 30% in customs; air (Express Aéreo/COMBEX-IM) in the red channel, 12 days. The honest reading: most of the time is consumed not by the tax authority (SAT) but by the private chain (shipping line, warehouse, broker, carrier) and by permits from other agencies. The numeric tables in the PDF are images; the figures come from Prensa Libre's coverage.

The research is written in English; quoted figures, source names and the titles of legal instruments stay in the language their source published them in.

Figures

Despacho terrestre (Tecún Umán II) al levanteSAT ETD vía Prensa Libre: 10.1 horas (66% privados / 34% aduana)julio 2019
Despacho marítimo, selectivo rojoSAT ETD vía Prensa Libre: 8.8 días (70% otros actores / 30% aduana)julio 2019
Despacho aéreo, selectivo rojoSAT ETD vía Prensa Libre: 12 díasjulio 2019

Caveat

press figures on a study whose tables are not extractable

Sources

SAT, Intendencia de Aduanas — Estudio de Tiempos de Despacho (PDF)competitividad.gtconsulted Aug 19, 2026
Prensa Libre, cobertura del Estudio de Tiempos de Despacho de la SATprensalibre.comconsulted Aug 22, 2026

Organizations named in the answer

Puerto QuetzalThe southern corridor's sea outlet: the Pacific coast handles 60% of the country's port traffic; around 60 km from the capital by the Palín-Escuintla motorway and 4 km from Zona Libre QuetzalPort
Prensa LibreConfirms the 10% capital gains tax (art. 92, Decree 10-2012), the taxable base, the 10-day deadline and SAT form 1321Other

Directory of organizations

Related records

This layer is research: read from public sources by the archive's own team, every claim cited with the date it was consulted, and audited where it is marked so. It has not entered the verified store — no figure here was fetched back from its source or stamped with a retrieval time — so it wears no red provenance numeral and never mixes with the verified figures.