For many of our North African tours, you will find yourself passing through the lovely capital of Tunis. Tunis is a great city to stop through, with a relaxed vibe, good food and an amazing coastline. Recently however, there have been reports of strict limits on the amount of currency that can be taken out of Tunisia with very low limits even for foreign currency.
We have recently been through Tunis a lot and so we thought we’d share our insight on how not to get cash taken off you at Tunis Airport.
Arrival
Firstly, when you arrive in Tunis as you are passing through immigration you will see signs all over warning you of the strict limits. The basic rule is amounts equal to or more than 5000 TND (roughly $1600 USD) will need to be declared when you enter the country. For example, if you have $5000 USD on you and you wish to leave with a similar amount you will need to declare it. If you have around $1600 on you then you don't need to do anything and can just ignore this blog and the signs in the airport.
If you don’t declare it, you could have it confiscated or be fined! The solution around this though is fairly easy. Once you are through immigration there will be a currency declaration window where you can show your cash and declare the amount you have on you. This process is speedy and will usually involve signing a few bits of paper and some rubber stamping. You will have to pay 10 TND to declare your cash, which can only be paid in Tunisian Dinar. If you don’t have any dinar on you, then there is a money changer right next to the declaration window as well as two ATMs, at least one of which is operational and working for foreign cards.
You will be given a slip of paper that has your details and the amounts in foreign currency written down. Don’t lose this as you may need to show it as proof of declaration when leaving.
What happens when you leave?
Well, as you’d expect in most situations not a whole lot. You do the normal bags through the scanner deal and that’s it. If they do go through your bags and fine a large amount of currency (over the 5000 TND limit) then you will be expected to show that slip of paper that you received when you declared your currency on arrival. 9 times out of 10 you probably won’t be stopped, however for peace of mind and to make sure you don’t get large amounts of cash taken off you, it’s absolutely worth taking the 5 minutes to declare when you arrive.
We definitely recommend checking out Tunisia if you are joining us on a tour in a nearby destination such as Libya and Algeria. If you’re looking at exploring North Africa and want to join us on tour then send us an email to [email protected] or check out what tours we have available here .
