By next year, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) hopes to clear 90% of all import shipments after four hours of filing of documents. But the ultimate goal is to cut the process down to one hour, Customs Commissioner John Phillip Sevilla.
During his presentation at last week’s 40th Philippine Business Conference attended by government and business leaders, Sevilla detailed BOC projects, including using a new electronic processing system that will provide faster processing for all types of shipments by the second half of 2015. The electronic system, which will take the place of the glitch-prone electronic-to-mobile system, is now being bidded out.
Ma. Flordeliza Leong, Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc. assistant vice president for advocacy and communications, told PortCalls in a text message that BOC’s goals “will help support export targets and boost (the country’s) image as a reliable supplier.”
“We sincerely hope he (Sevilla) succeeds. As export advocate, we’ll help the BOC achieve this target in all ways possible,” Leong said.
Sevilla said BOC is also working toward codifying all import regulations and processes involving 32 different government agencies, each of which requires its own set of clearances or permits from importers. The list would “minimize the amount of discretion” of customs employees, he said.
In addition, the agency is in talks with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) to come up with an electronic processing system for all PEZA imports by January 2015.
PEZA deputy director general Tereso Panga, called the plan a “welcome development”.
“Our locators are accustomed to our automated import and export documentation system with the e-payment facility,” Panga said in a text message to PortCalls. “We look forward to linking ASAP our system with the BOC system to improve further our facilitation, especially of our ecozone locators’ shipments,” a process which, he said, will lead to reduced processing time and cost.
Sevilla admitted that “Customs today is not where we want it to be,” and that 2014 has been a “challenging year for Philippine businesses.”
BOC is “not streamlined, it is not predictable, and it is definitely not efficient,” he acknowledged.
“We fully understand that the role of Customs is critical if the Philippines has to realize the opportunities (from) trade agreements.”
He recalled that when he was appointed to BOC in December 2013, he found “collections (were) not doing so well; there was quite a bit of smuggling going on; rice was a big issue; there was full-scale undervaluation in certain key commodities; there was the perception that there was large-scale smuggling facilitated by or tolerated by the bureau’s own people.” BOC was also generally perceived as the most corrupt agency in the country.
Since then, Sevilla said BOC has posted “significant improvements” in revenue collection.
For September alone, the agency collected P32.87 billion in revenue, its highest ever single-month collection and 27.2% more than the P25.84 billion collected in the same period last year.
BOC has also “made significant headway in reducing smuggling,” Sevilla said.
The newly formed Compliance Monitoring Unit (CMU) of BOC was tasked by Sevilla to “organize information in such a way that it will be easy to verify whether a particular transaction needs a permit or not.” Former BOC officials detailed at the Department of Finance’s Customs Policy Research Office were recently returned to the customs agency to man the CMU. – Roumina Pablo
Image courtesy of khunaspix at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
