Administration when entering Morocco

3.1. International Passport:

Everybody coming to Morocco for the Morocco Desert Challenge must have a valid international passport. An identity card is not sufficient. The passport needs to be valid until minimum 3 months after the rally and you should have at least half a page available for the entry & exit stamps.

3.2. Morocco:1 passport = 1 vehicle:

When entering Morocco with a vehicle,this vehicle will be registrered onto your passport. This means you can only leave the country in possession of that same vehicle. Driving to Morocco by car but returning by plane and letting somebody else drive back the car to Europe, is NOT possible.

On top of this the standard procedure states that 1 person can only bring 1 vehicle. This means that whoever drives a van to Morocco, transporting 1 motorbike, should be 2 persons in the van: the van will be registered in 1 person’s passport, the motorbike in the 2nd person’s passport. Those transporting more than 1 vehicle and who do not have enough co-drivers, must bring an “ATA Carnet”. (see below)

3.3.Procuration:

Every person wanting to enter Morocco with a vehicle that’s not registered in his/her own personal name, must carry a “procuration”. This is a document (provided by us) filled in by the real owner (as mentioned on the car or bike papers) in which he/she clearly allows the other person to temporarily bring the vehicle into Morocco.

This document is not valid unless it has been validated by an official: this official can be the people at the local town hall, a notary or a lawyer. Make sure the put an “official” stamp on the document. In fact the validation is a “verification of signature” i.e. somebody has to check and approve that the person filling in the procuration is in fact the owner of the vehicle and not just anybody. Therefore the owner need to present himself with the filled in document, his ID-card and the car papers.

In case the owner is not a real person but for instance a company, the procuration needs to be signed by one of the statutairy owners and he/she has to go to the townhall/notary/lawyer with not only the above mentioned documents, but also with the company statutes showing his/her name.

Please find an example of a procuration at the download page. Have it filled in and keep it with the rest of your vehicle documents.

3.4.Moroccan customs document D16-TER:

If you enter Morocco with 1 vehicle with is NOT a truck (anything else goes: cars, bikes, quads, campers, vans), you need to fill in a D16-customs document. This paper allows you to “temporarily import small tourist vehicles”. You can fill out this form on the ferry or in the port of Nador, but since last year it is possible to save time and do this online via the website of the Moroccan customs. Around February 2019 all participants will receive an e-mail on how to do this exactly. For those who know already how to do it, you’ll find it here: http://www.douane.gov.ma/web/guest/D16ter#http://www.douane.gov.ma/d16ter

3.5.the ATA Carnet:

If you want to come to Morocco with a truck, an ATA Carnet is obligatory. It’s also crucial that the truck itself is put on the carnet, next to the list of all transported goods and vehicles: motorbikes, quads, spare gear boxes, extra engine, compressor, power generator, etc. When all transported vehicles are mentioned on the Carnet ATA, 1 truck driver can enter an illimited number of vehicles into Morocco. You can order a Carnet ATA at your local Chamber of Commerce. Before leaving your own country, you should pay a visit to a local customs office where the mentioned goods are counted and the carnet stamped for a first time.