I’d lived in England where the cost of buying a new car was always a very expensive venture, but I was to find the purchase of a new car in Barbados would prove to be way beyond expensive. In the UK I was driving a Kia Shuma.

There was nothing particularly grand about the car, it took me from A to B, relatively cheaply and provided the level of comfort that I required, namely electric windows, automatic gearbox and a decent hi-fi. My current model was four years old. In making inquiries with the customs Department in Barbados, they told me I couldn’t bring in the car tax free from the UK as the two requirements for cars coming in tax free were:

a) it had to be less than four years old and

b) it must have completed less than 50,000 km.

My car failed on both counts, but only just. I was to find that dealing with bureaucracy in Barbados was a definite line. Don’t even try to cross it and the answer is ‘no.’ The cost of this new Kia model was around £8000. The same car in the United States was around $8000, at the exchange rate then of $1.5 to the pound, this meant that the car was available for £5,300.

I sent an e-mail off to the local Kia dealer in Barbados. It read:

I am relocating to Barbados soon. Please can you give me a guide as to the cost of a Kia Shuma, 1.5 fully loaded? I need to know only the approximate cost including tax. I do want a new model. How much extra for automatic? How much notice do I need to give you for delivery? Many thanks

It took eight days to get a reply by e-mail from the dealer, but at least they did reply:

The cost of a Kia Shuma fully loaded automatic is approximately, $51,000.00 BDS. No manual transmission is available. Vehicles are available according to our stock as we import direct from Kia in Korea. Please advise us of your arrival date. Kind Regards

At that time the exchange rate was about three Barbados dollars to the pound. That equates to around £17,000 for same car. That meant the same car was going to cost me over twice what it would’ve cost in the UK and three times what it would cost in the United States. My initial reaction involved a lot of cursing, but on investigating deeper I found that cars imported into Barbados suffer an import duty of between 100 and 250%.

This moving into Barbados idea was to become an expensive decision, financially.