Re: Re-registering Saudi car in Bahrain

Hi there.

If you like your furniture and are able to transport it here at reasonable cost, then you should opt for this. You will not be able to get good value for your furniture if you try to sell it off. And then you will spend a lot of money buying new furniture here in Bahrain.

As for the car, you could retain your Saudi registration and still drive the car here in Bahrain, especially if you will still have a visa to go to Saudi Arabia.

If you will not have a Saudi visa, then its better you register it here. I do not think the procedure is complicated. May take you a few hours at the traffic directorate.

Good luck with your move.

Hi there Farhaz,

Yes I like my furniture and am able to transport it to Bahrain at reasonable cost, so yes, I will opt for this.

As for the car, nobody who is expat can retain their Saudi registration (Istemara) when they leave on Final Exit. They must also sell all vehicles in their name or transfer them to another country.

So if you don't have a visa to go to Saudi Arabia, you cannot enter the country again after Final Exit.

As you say, if you do not have a Saudi visa, then its better you register it in Bahrain. If the procedure is not too complicated, it can be registered at the traffic directorate in Sitra, Bahrain.

Anyway, what I really need is specific instructions about how to do this on the Saudi side if anyone knows e.g. get Bahraini plates and de-register the Saudi plates? Or some other way?

Thanks for your help.

I too would do the same with the furniture. It's such a hassle to sell furniture in this part of the world. Absolutely no proper market for used furniture.

Buying new furniture, in the other hand, is a costly exercise. And takes time.

Good choice about transporting it over. There are some reputed movers who will do this fairly safely and at reasonable cost.

Thanks for the information about Saudi regulations about ownership when you leave Saudi Arabia for good.

I am not aware of transfer rules in Saudi Arabia and will leave this to experienced members to help us out with advise.

All the best for a successful and smooth move to Bahrain. It is a nice place to live and work.

Here's what a colleague of mine told me after he'd done it (just in case you didn't get it on the "other" forum ;-)

Exporting/Importing the car was a very long and frustrating process which I don't recommend. Half way through I wished I had never started it, but it was too late by then and my only option was to push on.

I should have written all the stages down, but I didn't and there were too many to remember. Briefly the stages went like this:

1.       You have to start at the traffic police in Saudi. Take an Arabic speaker with you. They inspect the car and take your estimara from you, remove your plates and put export plates on the car.

2.       Then you go to the export section on the Saudi side of the causeway.  The have weird clerks that process the clearance papers of the car.

3.       Then you arrive in the import section on the Bahraini side. You have to pay the duty on the car and have the car inspected again. And then there are some more weird clerks who process clearance papers on the Bahraini side. You also then get Import plates there. I can't remember if you need to have had the car insured by a Bahraini insurance company before or after this stage, I think before, or else your car will get stuck there. You get insurance based on the chassis number of the car because you don't have plates yet.

4.       Finally you go to Isa Town and complete the registration and they will give you your actual plates.

Each of the steps above has at least 10 steps within them and requires multiple forms to be stamped many many times.