The Gov­ern­ment has dou­bled sev­er­al Cus­toms fees, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, through a le­gal no­tice pub­lished on Christ­mas Day.

Le­gal No­tice No. 472, is­sued un­der the Cus­toms Act, in­creas­es the stan­dard cus­toms fee from $40 to $80. Fees at the Con­tain­er Ex­am­i­na­tion Sta­tion are al­so be­ing raised, with one cat­e­go­ry in­creas­ing from $375 to $750 and an­oth­er from $525 to $1,050.

The no­tice was signed on De­cem­ber 22, 2025, but on­ly pub­lished in the Le­gal Sup­ple­ment on De­cem­ber 25. All changes come in­to ef­fect on New Year’s Day.

The in­creas­es fol­low the con­tro­ver­sial dou­bling of traf­fic fines an­nounced in the same Christ­mas Day le­gal no­tices, prompt­ing crit­i­cism from op­po­si­tion politi­cians who said the moves were “clan­des­tine” and unan­nounced.

Cus­toms fees are ap­plied to goods en­ter­ing the coun­try and to con­tain­er in­spec­tions at of­fi­cial ex­am­i­na­tion sta­tions, mean­ing the changes will di­rect­ly af­fect im­porters, lo­gis­tics com­pa­nies, and busi­ness­es that re­ly on ship­ping ser­vices.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, when asked about the rise in fees, said, “Yes, the gov­ern­ment was los­ing mon­ey here. We were us­ing tax­pay­er dol­lars to sub­sidise these op­er­a­tions. These op­er­a­tions need to pay for them­selves and not be a bur­den on tax­pay­ers.” —Ke­jan Haynes