Importing shisha charcoal to Jordan: what the published procedure covers, and what it leaves to your agent
By Mohamad Sinno, Charcoal Expert · Reviewed by Budi Hartanto, shipping specialist · Last updated
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Import status in one paragraph
Jordan is unusually good at publishing how importing works. Its customs authority runs an official English-language portal that sets out procedures commodity by commodity, and that portal answers a question most markets leave you guessing at: which written procedure governs goods like yours. For coconut shell charcoal the answer is the general one, and the general one is short. What this page will not give you is a duty figure, a tax figure or a fee — a deliberate rule for this market. The more interesting gap is elsewhere, and it is about routes rather than rates.
Jordan publishes its procedure, and it publishes it by product
The Jordan Trade Facilitation Portal is run by Jordan Customs and describes itself as "an online platform where traders can access to a Trade Facilitation Repository and Detailed Procedures on import, export and transit of more than 70 products, thereby enhancing their compliance and reducing transaction delays". It was built with the International Trade Centre, GIZ and UNCTAD, and it exists to implement two specific obligations of the World Trade Organization's Trade Facilitation Agreement — the ones that require members to publish trade procedures and make them available. That matters for how much weight to put on it: this is a treaty obligation being discharged, not a courtesy page.
Because the portal is organised by commodity, it can be read for a negative as well as a positive. The import side enumerates its product categories explicitly — cosmetics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, gold, meat, live animals, car tyres, cement clinker, wheat, coffee, and some forty others. Charcoal, briquettes and solid fuels are not among them. One neighbouring category does exist, and it makes the absence sharper rather than weaker: there is a "Hookah and tobacco" category, but the only procedure published under it is Tobacco and Hookah Export Full Procedure by Seaports — an export procedure. There is no hookah or tobacco import procedure to be diverted onto.
So a container of shisha charcoal arriving by sea travels the General Import Full Procedure by Seaports. All of this was read from the portal on .
The general procedure has exactly one pre-approval, and that is the finding
Every import procedure the portal publishes is built from the same four stages: pre-approvals and licences, contractual requirements, clearance and logistics, and — for some goods — post-approvals from a regulatory authority. Comparing the general procedure against the commodity-specific ones is more informative than reading either alone:
| Stage | General Import Procedure | A regulated commodity, for contrast |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-approvals and licences | One step — obtaining or renewing an importer card for the first time | The importer card plus a ministry import licence, and often a test report or a classification decision |
| Contractual requirements | Contracting with a shipping company, a clearance company, and a transport company | The same three |
| Clearance and logistics | Shipping and clearance procedures by sea | The same |
| Post-approvals from regulators | None published | Sample testing, a food or drug authority approval, a slaughterhouse or quarantine release |
Read the first row and the last. Goods that fall to the general procedure carry the importer card and nothing else before shipment, and no regulatory sign-off after arrival. Every commodity-specific import procedure on the portal — pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, live animals, chilled meat, fish, cheese, wheat, coffee, animal feed additives — carries at least one more pre-approval, and most carry a post-approval too. The structure is telling you that the licensing burden on this consignment is the light one. That is a more useful thing for a buyer to know than a rate, and unlike a rate it does not move every quarter.
Two limits on that, stated rather than glossed. The importer card is an obligation on the Jordanian buyer, not on an Indonesian shipper, and we have deliberately not described who issues it, what it costs or how long it takes — the portal's step detail did not render those to us and a procedure repeated from memory is how stale instructions spread. And the portal carries its own disclaimer: best efforts have been made so the material "reflect actual administrative norms and practices", but the entities behind it "are not responsible for its exactness". The authority that publishes the procedure declines to warrant it. Confirm the sequence with a licensed clearing agent.
Why this page publishes no cost figure
Jordan is one of four markets where this site publishes no duty, tax or fee. The reason is not that the figures are secret — Jordan publishes them, and we will tell you exactly where. It is that rates in these markets move faster than a reference page can honestly track, and a number we would not stand behind in three months is worse for you than no number at all. So we did not merely leave them out: we did not look them up. A figure held in mind has a way of turning into a hedge, an "approximately", a range — and a range on a page like this reads as guidance.
Where to get them instead. Jordan Customs runs a Trade Facilitation Information Repository, separate from the procedure portal, with nine published sections. Four of them answer the questions this page will not: duties and taxes related to import or export; fees for services related to import, export or transit; rules for the classification and evaluation of goods; and rules of origin and free trade agreements to which Jordan is bound. There are also sections on restrictions and prohibitions, on penalties, on appeal and review procedures, and on tariff quotas. That is the authoritative source, it is the government's own, and it is in English.
What we publish in place of figures is method: our landed-cost methodology works the same in Jordan as anywhere — only the inputs differ, and here you fetch the inputs yourself from the repository above, or your clearing agent quotes them against your actual declaration. Ask for them itemised, each line marked as duty, tax, or port and handling, so a later change shows up as a change instead of vanishing into a total. The withheld rows, Jordan among them, and the markets whose figures are published sit side by side in the country index of the master import guide.
The Aqaba corridor: Jordan as the gateway for Iraq-bound cargo
Aqaba is Jordan's sea gateway, and for some cargo it is more than that. On our current routings, containers destined for Iraq ship by sea to Aqaba and continue overland; direct sea shipment of dangerous-goods cargo — charcoal is Class 4.2 — to Iraqi ports is not currently accepted on the services we book. That is our own shipping practice as at , not a carrier rule, a Jordanian rule or an Iraqi one, and we re-verify carrier acceptance of dangerous goods quarterly because it is exactly the sort of thing that changes without announcement.
For a buyer, the practical shape is this: the sea leg ends at Aqaba, an overland leg follows, and the two legs have different paperwork and different people responsible for them. If you are importing into Jordan, the general procedure above is your path and the corridor is irrelevant. If your goods are moving through Jordan, it is the whole question — and it is where the published record runs out.
Jordan publishes three transit classes, and none of them is this one
The portal publishes transit as a proper class of procedure, with one prior-approval step and three named movement types, each carrying its own set of full procedures:
| Published transit class | Movement it describes |
|---|---|
| Transit from land border center to another center | Land in, land on |
| Transit from land border center to sea border center | Land in, sea out |
| Transit from land border center to air border center | Land in, air out |
| Sea in, land out | Not named in the published index |
All three published classes start at a land border. The movement described at the top of this section — arrive by sea at Aqaba, depart overland — is the one direction the transit index does not name. Be careful about what that does and does not mean. It is not a finding that the movement is prohibited, or unusual, or difficult: an unpublished procedure is not a prohibited one, and our own cargo makes this exact movement today. What it means is narrower and more useful. If you go looking for the written Jordanian transit procedure that governs your Iraq-bound container, you will not find it in the obvious place, and you should stop looking rather than assume you have misread the index. This is a question for a clearing agent licensed in Jordan, and it is worth asking before the booking rather than after the arrival.
The destination-side half of this is on our Iraq import guide, which covers the conformity programme, the consular legalization chain and the valuation problem an Iraqi entry runs into. Between the two pages, the sea leg and the entry are described; the overland leg between them is the part neither government publishes in the place you would look.
What a carrier asks for at Aqaba
Aqaba operates as a special economic zone, and cargo consigned into it is treated differently from cargo entering the rest of the country. We are not going to describe that regime's terms, because we could not reach the zone authority's own material and will not paraphrase a regime from second-hand accounts. What is worth passing on is operational and comes from a major container line's published local requirements for Jordan: cargo for the zone is expected to show Aqaba as the discharge port and to name the zone on the body of the bill of lading; the consignee is expected to hold a valid Jordanian tax number; the bill of lading and the manifest are expected to match each other exactly; and bills of lading for Aqaba are released some days ahead of the vessel's arrival rather than on arrival.
Two caveats, and they are real. These are one carrier's requirements, not Jordanian law, and lines differ — confirm them with whichever line actually carries your box. And we were unable to re-read that page ourselves this week, so the summary above is second-hand and is deliberately not quoted as anyone's exact words. The reason it earns a place at all is that it is the same discipline this site publishes for every market: the description issued before loading has to agree across every document that follows it.
Dangerous goods, origin documents, and two honest gaps
Charcoal ships as declared dangerous goods, and that is settled at origin rather than by the destination — classification, carrier acceptance, weathering and packing conditions and the accompanying declaration are covered in the shipping and dangerous-goods section, the classification in UN 1361 under IMDG 42-24, and the paperwork in the export document set. Jordan does publish a procedure titled "Obtaining Dangerous Goods Shipping Approval Certificate", which is worth knowing exists. We cite it as existence only: in the portal's index it sits among export-side steps, and whether it reaches an inbound sea consignment or an onward overland leg is not something the listing establishes. Ask your clearing agent rather than assuming either way.
The second gap is about origin documents, and we would rather name it than fill it. The portal publishes two certificate-of-origin procedures — one through the chambers of commerce, one through the chambers of industry. Both are for Jordanian exporters obtaining a certificate for goods leaving Jordan. Neither says anything about what an inbound Indonesian certificate of origin must carry or whose hands it must pass through, which is the question an import guide actually has to answer. We are not going to infer the inbound chain from the outbound one; they are different documents with different issuers. The universal set is on our import documentation page, and the Jordanian overlay on it is a question for your buyer's agent, confirmed in writing before the file is assembled.
Questions Jordanian importers ask
What will this cost to clear?
We do not publish that for this market, and we did not look it up. Jordan Customs publishes duties, taxes and service fees in its own Trade Facilitation Information Repository — go there, or have your clearing agent quote against your actual declaration, itemised.
Do we need a special import licence for charcoal?
Nothing in the published procedure set suggests one. Charcoal has no commodity-specific procedure, so it travels the general import path, and the general path's only pre-approval is the importer card your buyer holds anyway. Confirm it with a licensed agent, but this is not a market where the published structure hints at a hidden licence.
Our cargo is going on to Iraq. Whose procedure applies in the middle?
That is the honest open question on this page. Jordan publishes three transit classes and all three begin at a land border, so the sea-in, land-out movement is not named in the index. Put it to a clearing agent licensed in Jordan before you book, and get the answer in writing.
Can we consign the container straight to a buyer inside the Aqaba zone?
Carriers we have seen guidance from expect the zone to be named on the bill of lading and the consignee to hold a Jordanian tax number, with the bill and the manifest matching exactly. Treat that as carrier-specific and confirm it with your line — and get the consignee details right before the bill is issued, because a bill that does not match the manifest is corrected slowly.
Preparing a Jordan shipment, or an Iraq-bound one moving through Aqaba, and want the origin-side half of the file right first time? Message us on WhatsApp at +62 821 3924 038 and we will put together the country-correct document pack — the goods description, composition and process particulars, and the dangerous-goods paperwork in the form the sea leg needs.
Sources, all read : the Jordan Trade Facilitation Portal, operated by Jordan Customs with the International Trade Centre, GIZ and UNCTAD — its About page, its General Import Full Procedure by Seaports, its importer-card and dangerous-goods procedures, its transit index and its site-wide disclaimer; and the Jordan Customs Trade Facilitation Information Repository index. The Aqaba bill-of-lading points are a container line's published local requirements, summarised second-hand and unverified by us this week. Our own routing practice is dated and is re-verified quarterly. Duty, tax, fee and levy figures are deliberately not published here, and no Jordanian rate was looked up in preparing this page. Import guidance, not legal, tax or financial advice.