Shopping in St. Kitts & Nevis

What are you looking for? Where will you find it? And is it a bargain?
by Martin Kreiner

For our US visitors, your individual duty-free exemption is $800.00, which may include a litre of alcohol. However, you can bring back a second litre provided it was manufactured on St. Kitts or Nevis. Also, keep in mind the following helpful information from the US
Government’s booklet “Know Before You Go”:

Duty on items you mail home to yourself will be waived if the value is $200 or less. Antiques that are at least 100 years old, and fine art may enter duty-free, but folk art and handicrafts are generally dutiable. This means that, depending on what items you’re bringing back from your trip, you could come home with more than $800 worth of gifts or urchases and still not be charged duty. For instance, say you received a $700 bracelet as a gift, and you bought a $40 hat and a $60 color print. Because these items total $800, you would not be charged duty, since you have not exceeded your duty-free exemption. If you had also bought a $500 painting on that trip, you could bring all $1300 worth of merchandise home without having to pay duty, because fine art is duty-free.

By the way, if you overnight in St. Thomas or St. Croix on the way home, you can buy an additional $800 worth of goods there for a total exemption of $1600.00 per person.

Canadian visitors out of the country seven or more days have a Can$750.00 exemption per person which may include 1.5 litres of wine or 1.14 litres of liquor.

FYI, most of our shops and restaurants geared to island visitors accept US dollars, all major credit cards and travellers’ cheques (with proper photo identification). If you need
currency you will find banks and cash machines in St. Kitts at Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia, First Caribbean International Bank (formerly Barclays Bank) and the St. Kitts and Nevis National Bank near the Circus in Basseterre. In Charlestown, Nevis,
you’ll find The Bank of Nevis, The Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (RBTT) as well as Scotia, Bank, First Caribbean International Bank and the St. Kitts and Nevis National bank, all within easy walking distance. Note: Bank cash machines dispense local currency only.

Below I have listed items of interest and the shops where you are most likely to find them. At this writing new shops are under construction at Port Zante, getting ready for the 2007 season. So do walk around and check them out. To save repetition, I have used the
following code to indicate shop locations:

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