The situation:
Importing a Gen2 (plan = "standard-gen2") ibm_database instance , via an import {} block or terraform import , always failed with a misleading: Error: [ERROR] The database instance was not found in the region set for the Provider, or the default of us-south. The instance genuinely existed in the correct region. Root cause, identified in the thread: pickResourceBackend in resource_ibm_database.go dispatches on d.Get("plan"), but during import-driven Read the plan field is not yet populated, so it always falls through to the Gen1 (classic) backend, whose Gen1-specific GetDeploymentInfo 404s on a Gen2 deployment.
What actually fixes it (verified in the thread):
The "not found in the region" error is misleading , it is a Gen1/Gen2 backend dispatch bug, not a region problem. The maintainer linked a fix PR (IBM-Cloud/terraform-provider-ibm#7000) and the issue is closed. Upgrade to a provider release containing that fix; in the meantime, if the import target is a Gen2 (standard-gen2) database, know that the failure is expected on affected versions regardless of how correctly your region and CRN are set , do not chase the region config. Source: https://github.com/IBM-Cloud/terraform-provider-ibm/issues/6996